Featured Ekphrastics
JUNGLE: Volume VIII
For JUNGLE: Volume VIII, Quibble Lit invites writers to respond to two featured artworks:
“Frog Prince” by Carella Keil
“The Frog’s Return” by Sophia Kurtz
“Frog Prince”
Vol. VIII - Front Cover
“The Frog’s Return”
Vol. VIII - Back Cover
These works will help shape the visual and imaginative atmosphere of the issue, inviting writers into a world of transformation, creatureliness, folklore, beauty, unease, and the lush edge between the human, the animal, the magical, and the overgrown.
We’re seeking 3–5 standout ekphrastic responses — poetry or prose — that engage meaningfully with “Frog Prince,” “The Frog’s Return,” or both.
Writers may approach the artworks literally or abstractly, narratively or lyrically, intimately or wildly. We’re interested less in description alone and more in what the images stir: myth, memory, humor, tension, voice, return, metamorphosis, appetite, enchantment, or something stranger still.
Selected pieces will appear in sequence within JUNGLE, helping open the issue through a layered conversation between image and language.
What we’re looking for:
Poetry or prose
Work that clearly engages one or both featured artworks (indicate which within submission!)
Responses that begin with close attention and move somewhere alive
Writing that can be beautiful, bizarre, funny, feral, elegant, unsettling, or all of the above
PEOPLE - Featured Ekphrastics
For Quibble Volume 7, PEOPLE, we invited writers to participate in a focused creative exchange between visual art and language.
This featured call centers on two original collage artworks by Devon Balwit, which will serve as the front and back cover images for the issue:
Smoking — Front Cover
Shave and a Haircut — Back Cover
Balwit’s collages work through juxtaposition, gesture, and interruption—assembling fragments into portraits that fill the surreal with the feel of the familiar.
Writers may approach the artworks literally or abstractly, narratively or lyrically. We’re less interested in description alone than in what the image unlocks: a voice, a character, a memory, a tension, a question.
