About

What is Copper Nickel?

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

Unlike traditional campus literary journals, Copper Nickel publishes work by student authors and by professional authors. Selection is competitive, and more like a national literary journal's editorial process than a traditional campus literary magazine's. The idea is that the best student work is worthy of publication in the best journals, so we created one of those "best" journals so our students could have the best showing possible. Copper Nickel is recognized as a national literary journal, but unlike other national journals our staff is 96% undergraduate students.

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 about 2-3% 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 2003 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.