Call for Submissions: Allen Ginsberg Issue

As most of you will know, this year marks the 100^th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s birth, and Beatdom will celebrate it with a special edition of our journal. We did one for Jack Kerouac back in 2022:

We announced a few months ago that we were open to submissions and we will remain open until March 31^st, so this email should function as a friendly reminder.

In the print editions of Beatdom, we publish mostly essays but also interviews, reviews, memoirs, poetry, and visual art. We are open to submissions in all of these forms; however, please note that this is a black-and-white journal. Colourful works of art sometimes do not reproduce well, so consider that before submitting.

We seek a balance of content but we heavily favour essays. We like original works that dig deep and explore the unexplored and we try to avoid that which has already been thoroughly discussed. As an example of something we are very excited about, we have been promised an essay on a completely overlooked Ginsberg trip to a European country based on research materials that were not previously known.

This issue will go on sale on Ginsberg’s birthday (June 3). More information here:

You can find general submissions advice here: https://www.beatdom.com/submission-guidelines/ You can also get a feel for what we like by reading our most recent issues.

We will release the cover art in a few months. For now, here’s a collage I made of Ginsberg throughout his life…

More Beat News & Updates

In related news, we still have not decided on a final release date for Thomas Antonic’s forthcoming book about William S. Burroughs’ three wives. Rest assured, everyone who pre-ordered it will get their copies sent out in advance of the release date. The book is finished and currently in the late editing stages. It is a long and complex work, based on a truly astounding amount of research, so the editing process is longer than for most of our other books. We are also awaiting the final cover art. This is an extremely important book and we do not wish to rush it in any way.

We will also publish Marc Olmsted’s book about Buddhism and the Beats: Beat Dharma. It is a collection of many works he’s written over the years, which have been edited and sometimes expanded and are now grouped together as one book. They look at the various connection points between the Beat writers and Buddhism. We hope to have this published around the Ginsberg centennial.

We recently agreed to publish a very exciting book: Beat Girl. It is a novel about Edie Parker, written by Michael Zadoorian. Beatdom Books stopped publishing fiction more than a decade ago, so this is a huge change for us but the book was simply too good to pass up. It will come out in early 2027.

We have several more books under discussion, so subscribe to stay updated or consider following us on Facebook.

Subscribe now

Sadly, the Beat world has lost three important people in the past few weeks: Michael Schumacher, James Grauerholz, and Jami Cassady. Michael wrote what I think is the best of the Ginsberg biographies, James was indescribably important in supporting William Burroughs in his final decades and then furthering his legacy after his death, and Jami was a tireless campaigner for her parents’ work. I had the pleasure of corresponding with all three of them. They each helped me on various projects and I will be eternally grateful for that and for having had the chance to know them. They will be sorely missed by all in the Beat world.

In case you missed them, here are a few recent essays and articles relating to the Beat writers. Some are from our website and Substack and others are from elsewhere on the internet:

• “Kindred Spirits” – an essay drawing comparisons between Kerouac’s On the Road and Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes.

• “Ginsberg on Blake, 1979” – a series of transcripts from the Allen Ginsberg Project.

• “Maya Angelou and the Beat Generation” – the title is pretty self-explanatory. It shows how Angelou briefly connected with the mid-50s San Francisco Beat scene.

• “The Self-Published Beats” – an exploration of the extent to which the Beat writers were involved in self-publishing.

• “A Multi-Cultural Tapestry of American Voices” – an interview with Brett Sigurdson that offers very interesting insights into the creation of On the Road.

• “Houellebecq and Burroughs” – a short essay on similarities between the late Beat writer and the contemporary French one.

• “Obituary #8: James Grauerholz” – Oliver Harris remembers Grauerholz, who passed away at the start of this year.

• “Jack Kerouac’s On the Road Scroll to Auction” – just in case anyone has a spare few million dollars…

• “In the Shadow of the Beats” – an essay on female Beat writers. There are quite a few glaring mistakes here but also some good points made and overall it is worth reading.

Finally, a major caveat emptor for those who try to stay on top of the huge amount of Beat studies material being published these days. The AI bots have finally arrived with the publication of a 25-page book on the Beats. The author churns out a book every few days, usually on more lucrative topics such as investing and religion, but has now turned to Beat history. Oh well, maybe if you “want to feel smarter,” you’ll be interested...

If I were you, I’d save your $0.99. I read the Kindle sample and it’s pure AI slop. Don’t feed the beast. Instead, consider some of 2025’s Beat books that were written by real humans. Here’s a list. Or heck, you could become a voluntary supporter of this Substack. We have many essays lined up for 2026.