Vulgata Magazine

We are looking for well written fiction -- specifically for works that involve a strong fusion or form and content. This means that you can have psychologically uncomplicated characters if you are doing an Indiana Jones style action adventure set during the sack of Constantinople, but then you have to have very well evoked action. Likewise, you can get away with relatively skimpy plot if you are doing an in-depth character portrait a la "Notes from Underground" -- but then your psychological insights have to be genuinely penetrating. Generally, though, I have a preference for works that incorporate multiple different scene types. The most important thing, no matter what you are doing, is to use images. Good writing -- even good non-fiction -- draws pictures in the head of the reader, even when doing exposition.

Vulgata is looking for high-quality articles that address issues of interest in Catholic apologetics and culture. Query first.

We are looking for poetry that evokes the mysterious, the beautiful, the haunted, the sorrowful, the wonderful. Poetry is a means of exploring the intimate relationships between form and content. A poem that is in the form of raw inspiration dropped out onto a page with line breaks is a very good beginning, but it like an uncut diamond: it is not yet a poem. The process of crafting this raw material into a work is difficult. The inspiration must be carefully cropped and pruned, without killing it. Bad poetry errs in three ways: it is uninspired, it is inspired but not crafted, or it is inspired, and then wrought to death. The great thing to avoid is writing a "poem" that is really just normal prose that has been centered in the middle column of a page; but which has no meter, metaphor, enriched adjectives, etc.