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Geist Magazine

Geist is the Canadian magazine of ideas & culture—fact + fiction, photography, comix, essays, revi

Geist is the Canadian magazine of ideas and culture, with a strong literary focus and a sense of humour. The Geist tone is intelligent, plain-talking, inclusive and offbeat. Each issue reflects a convergence of fiction, non-fiction, photography, comix, reviews, little-known facts of interest, poetry, cartography and the legendary Geist crossword puzzle. At the heart of our enter

prise is the imaginary country that some of us inhabit from time to time, and which often has something to do with Canada.

07/22/2025

“I watched satellite footage of the instant the aurora borealis turned on their edge and sliced right through the exosphere, as though determined to pull us out before we died inside the mother.” –From the postcard story "Should I Be Worried?" by Carrie Mac, featured in Geist 128 🛰️

Read more at geist.com/contests/should-i-be-worried

07/17/2025

ICYMI: Submissions are open! Celebrate 35 years of Geist by sending us your best work inspired by the 1990s 🌀

We invite writing that folds time, making the ’90s feel present, vital, its spirit rippling into the future. Excavate the cultural residue of the last century. Reclaim the art of waiting. Wander back inside the mall you thought was demolished. Reimagine the decade through surreal or speculative lenses, explore its obsolete visions of the future. Let time feel like friction, glitch, or ghost.

Deadline: August 1, 2025
geist.com/submit

07/08/2025

Call for Submissions! A FOLD IN TIME. To mark 35 years of Geist, we're inviting work inspired by the ’90s—a decade caught between analog and digital worlds, rom-com optimism and millennial anxiety. What survives from that era in our attention spans, dreams, aesthetics, or modes of resistance? We welcome writing that reflects, reimagines, repairs—or revels in the glittering angst of it all.

Deadline: August 1, 2025.

Please read our full submission guidelines: geist.com/submit

06/26/2025

The deadline for the 20th Annual Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest has been EXTENDED! ✍️ You have two more weeks to send us your stories 📬

New Deadline: July 14, 2025 at 11:59PM PST.

Send us a story and a postcard—the relationship can be as strong or as tangential as you like, so long as there is a clear connection between the story and the image. Fiction and non-fiction accepted. Maximum length is 500 words.

Cash prizes and publication in Geist for winning entries! Read full contest details at geist.com/contests/the-20th-annual-literal-literary-postcard-story-contest

06/24/2025

My knowledge of her mother tongue was built on sounds of delight
coloured in her kitchen and in the gardens of Beirut:
Names of dishes that swish—
riz bi sharieh and loubieh bzeit;
humour and rudeness
in the moniker of the putrid-smelling
flower, fusse uta (cat fart);
and the phrase
sa3daan teezek hamra
(the monkey has a red ass).
🌺
—From the hybrid essay, “Righthand Justified,” by Rayya Liebich, issue 128
💐
Read at geist.com/fact/righthand-justified-2

06/20/2025

At the 2025 National Magazine Awards, the comic "Long Lost Lido" by Onjana Yawnghwe, published in Geist 127, received Silver in the One-of-a-Kind Storytelling category!

From the NMA jury:
This sweet, charming, and beautifully illustrated piece of graphic journalism takes readers on a journey through a small slice of Vancouver’s history. With deep research and close observation, it offers a touching reminder to look more closely and appreciate the overlooked places in our everyday surroundings.
—NMA Jury

Huge congratulations to Onjana on your achievement with this wonderful graphic essay. We are thrilled!
🩵

06/17/2025

🌚 Geist 129 is out now! 🌝 Notes & Dispatches from HELEN HUMPHREYS, GINGER NGO, COURTNEY BUDER, and JENNIFER GOSSOO

New fiction by FINNIAN BURNETT; Feature essay from SORAYA ROBERTS; Comic by CM WAIN; Poetry from MISHA SOLOMON and GUY ELSTON; and much more!

Cover art by JEFF MANN 🚙

Get the issue (or subscribe!) at geist.com/subscribe-online/geist-129

06/10/2025

Reminder to submit to the 20th Annual Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest!

Send us a story and a postcard—the relationship can be as strong or as tangential as you like, so long as there is a clear connection between the story and the image. Fiction and non-fiction accepted. Maximum length is 500 words.

Deadline: June 30, 2025 at 11:59PM PST.

Cash prizes and publication in Geist for winning entries! Read full contest details at geist.com/contests/the-20th-annual-literal-literary-postcard-story-contest.

06/05/2025

My students are creative. They look up the meaning of the word “apocalypse,” discover the Greek word apokálypsis means revelation. Instead of talking about the end of the world, they talk about what is revealed. In a novel, it turns out, much is revealed. Apocalyptic revelations are typically mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, they read off Wikipedia. What is an author to a character but an otherworldly being, a god of a kind?
🔥
—From the dispatch, “A Partial List of Inconvenient Truths,” by Hollie Adams, issue 127
🌊
Congratulations, Hollie! "A Partial List of Inconvenient Truths" has been selected by Best Canadian Essays 2026 (Biblioasis) and was shortlisted for the Maine Literary Awards 2025 in the Short Works Competition in Nonfiction.
💨
Read at geist.com/fact/a-partial-list-of-inconvenient-truths

06/03/2025

We are incredibly pleased that three Geist pieces will be anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry 2026 and Best Canadian Essays 2026! Selected by Mary Dalton (poetry) and Brian Bethune (essays), both anthologies are forthcoming with Biblioasis on November 18.

A big congratulations to the three writers whose work has been recognized!

Nofel, “In Arabic” (Geist 127, poetry)
Evelyn Lau, “Cursing, Flailing” (Geist 126, poetry)
Hollie Adams, “A Partial List of Inconvenient Truths” (Geist 127, essay)

05/29/2025

Geist is ecstatic to announce the winners of the 2024 Short Long-Distance Writing Contest!

🛻 Congratulations! ✈️

First Prize: "Alberta-Bound" by Mark John Hiemstra
Second Prize: "Open Turn" by Simon Marmorek
Third Prize: "Waterproof" by Elizabeth Templeman

The three winning stories will be published in Geist 130, out this fall.

Read more about the contest: geist.com/contests/the-2024-short-long-distance-writing-contest

Thank you to all who sent in their stories and essays!

05/27/2025

The Lido was a Vancouver mystery, especially to folks who lived in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood in the 2000s. Like me.
🏚️
—Detail from the non-fiction comic, "Long Lost Lido," by Onjana Yawnghwe, issue 127

"Long Lost Lido" is a 2025 National Magazine Award nominee for One-of-a-Kind Storytelling. Congratulations, Onjana!

Read at geist.com/comics/long-lost-lido
🐎
Onjana Yawn

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