FENCE is a literary magazine with a commitment to publishing from within and outside of established communities of writing, always looking to question, collaborate, and overturn the systems that bring new works into being. It is the kind of publication that treats the boundary between mainstream and experimental literature not as a border to be policed but as a territory to be explored.
The magazine publishes poetry, fiction, essays, and art with a curatorial sensibility that refuses to privilege any single tradition or school. What matters is not where the work comes from but what it does — whether it surprises, challenges, moves, or unsettles in ways that more conventional literary magazines would not permit. FENCE is interested in the writing that does not yet have a home, and in giving it one.
The name suggests both enclosure and boundary — something that defines a space and something that can be climbed over. FENCE has been doing both for years: creating a space for adventurous writing while simultaneously refusing to let that space become a ghetto. It is a magazine that believes literature is at its best when it is in motion, crossing fences rather than sitting behind them.