Inaugural Issue Special Theme

The namesake for 3 Sisters comes from the only trio of identical self-anchored suspension bridges in the world: in the city of Pittsburgh, this journal’s home. The Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Street Bridges all cross the Allegheny River, which joins the Monongahela River to form the Ohio River. The bridges are located on the ancestral lands of the Seneca, as well as the Monongahela peoples who were later joined by refugees of other tribes (including the Delaware, Shawnee, Mingo, and Haudenosaunee tribes), who were all forced off their original land and displaced by European colonists. We acknowledge the native languages and cultures that have been severely damaged or lost due to forced removal and assimilation. We honor the original caretakers of this region and uplift their historic, unique, and enduring relationship with this land, which is their ancestral territory. 

For our first issue, 3 Sisters invites work in conversation with our namesake and its various associations: waterways, river systems, triptych, triads, triangles, triplets, tercets, terza rima, three-leggedness, sorority, sisterhood, holy trinity, fate, mythology, suspension, confluence, repetitive folklore, and multiplicity. We encourage innovation, playfulness, and deviation from the literal.

We plan to launch our inaugural issue in late April 2026.

General Submission Guidelines

We accept work from all genres, including but not limited to fiction, non-fiction, poetry, art, mixed media, essay, video pieces, computational work, audio offerings, objects, and more. We are especially interested in hybrid works, work that falls in between genres, and pieces that are not easily categorized. We delight in art that is structurally unconventional, fragmentary, elliptical, or otherwise weird and surprising. As an online publication we are excited to showcase works that utilize the digital format in unique ways.

Our Open Submission Period is currently closed and will reopen again in the Fall (August 2026). FYI, we use the free old school Submission Manager.

Simultaneous submissions are expected; please do alert us immediately when your work is accepted elsewhere by withdrawing it manually in our submissions manager.

We do not consider previously published work.

All rights revert to the authors/artists after publication, and the works can then be reprinted (though we ask that we get an acknowledgment as its place of initial publication).

3 Sisters is currently able to offer a modest honorarium for accepted work. The amount per contributor or piece is dependent on our overall number of contributors for a given issue, and the budget allocated to us by the University of Pittsburgh. These numbers are subject to change per issue.

At this time, we are unable to offer any feedback on individual submissions.