mbark is a literary journal designed for novelists and featuring exclusively novel beginnings—those crucial first pages that must engage the reader’s attention and often receive more polishing than any other part of the book. We believe that crafting a novel’s opening is an art in itself, and that reading beginnings can be both inspiring and delightful. If you prefer novels to short stories, love collecting first sentences, and enjoy reading books’ opening pages, Embark is for you! And if you’re a writer working on your first or fifth or fifteenth novel, Embark offers you a chance to share your latest project with fellow writers and readers. Best of all, literary agents are included among our readers, and several of our contributors have found representatives for their work through Embark.

Our issues are released twice a year on this website, in April and October. The most recent issue, from April 2024, can be found here! Every issue includes ten novel beginnings, each accompanied by a brief Author’s Statement that might offer a summary of the plot, the intentions behind the novel, a meditation on its theme—whatever the author feels is most important or meaningful about the project.

We welcome submissions from writers of every genre; our emphasis is on engaging characters, intriguing situations, and polished, elegant prose. For more information, please visit our Submission Guidelines.

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