About Talon

Who We Are

The Talon Review is a literary magazine housed at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. Founded in 2012 by Mark Ari with students from his creative writing workshop, we’re run entirely by current and former students. We began as HashtagOctothorpe, a journal dedicated to student voices at UNF. In 2014, the journal was re-envisioned and rededicated as the Talon Review, and in 2018 the journal moved from student voices to global. We are now home to emerging and established writers worldwide.

We publish twice yearly, in the spring and fall, and are exclusively digital.

To honor its student-led roots, The Catch is a blog-style monthly newsletter dedicated to publishing UNF student writers. It features creative writing, Talon updates, author interviews, and book reviews.

What We Seek

Here at Talon, we crave the piercing and unencumbered. Pieces that will sink its claws in the reader’s mind, so to speak. We want to expose the underbelly of our relevant humanity through vulnerable language. Give us concepts that rub together opposing ideologies. Capture the sense of self sparked within that uncomfortable friction. Combine words we’ve yet to encounter. Most of all, give us stories that, in a sense, can be a friend. Stories that hold our hand and make us feel a little less alone. Consider what connects us as humans regardless of race, class, gender, and culture. When submitting ask how your work satisfies this need, what makes it urgent, and why it demands an audience. 

There is no genre or theme to Talon. We seek submissions of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and art. We also welcome audio or video submissions for our website. Audio files may be performances of poetry, flash, or song. Videos may be essays or cinepoetry.

Our Mission and Ethics

Our space is meant to validate and amplify all experiences and to serve readers who chase transcendent literature. We seek to compile an international collection of works from a diverse pool of poets, authors, and artists. Diversity to us means lifting those who are previously unpublished alongside experienced writers from all walks of life. We are dedicated to bringing innovative contemporary work to our readers at no cost. Submitting to our journal is also free.

We operate on a “do no harm” philosophy and do not tolerate romanticizing hate speech, bigotry, racism, xenophobia, or misogyny. These are the doctrines we aim to dismantle.

Our hope is that you join our community, either by reading our curated issues or by submitting your pieces to us for publication.