About

What is Copper Nickel?

Copper Nickel is a literary journal published by the students and faculty at the University of Colorado Denver.

Students in the undergraduate Creative Writing program at UCD work with their faculty mentors in a collaborative process designed to teach the students all aspects of literary publication—from selection to line editing to typesetting and production—while creating a journal that reaches an international audience.

What do you publish?

Anything good. Stories, poems, essays, photographs, art, lists, letters, recipes.

How often do you publish?

We publish two issues a year, one in October and one in February of each year.

Who can submit work? How do I submit?

Anyone can submit work for consideration. Anyone. Competition is fierce, however: we publish less than 2% of the work we consider each year.

How do you submit work?

All submissions must be made through our online submission manager.

Do you pay contributors?

At present, we pay all contributors in copies and subscriptions, and we work hard to promote the work of contributing writers, to honor their art and labor with readers. This, we believe, is the central mission of the literary journal.

We do wish we could offer additional remuneration to our contributors. Our budget, however, is a moving target, and at present we must put everything we have into printing the journal. All of our efforts are on volunteer bases for the love of the literary enterprise.

What does 'Copper Nickel' mean?

The students who founded Copper Nickel in 2002 wanted a name that would speak to Denver's history and a name that would suggest the worth -- however strange -- of a literary enterprise. They started playing with names that could evoke Denver's history of mining as well as its distinction as a site for a national mint. One student observed that a nickel isn't made just of nickel, but that if a nickel were made entirely of copper, it would be worth more than a nickel. So "Copper Nickel" means something of value that is unconventional and that is worth more than you might think.