For its second issue, Loom is seeking work that critically, thematically or formally engages with film, television and video. Screen writing in its broadest possible form: deep dives into beloved directors/actors/works, collaborations between writers and filmmakers, ekphrastic poetry, your name fanfiction (...literary), industry examinations etc etc etc.

Deadline

Pitches and full drafts for fiction, nonfiction, poetry and comics are open until Midnight AEST, Friday 20 February 2026.

Pay

All selected artists will receive $180AUD for their work.

Constraints

• We are seeking previously unpublished work.

• Feel free to send a pitch, draft or something more fully fleshed out.

• You may submit up to three pitches and/or drafts for consideration.

• Pieces from ‘Cut’ will first appear in print, and subsequently on our website. We encourage work that challenges and expands out of the page (requiring digital elements), but all pieces need to function effectively in print.

• For fiction and essays, we are generally looking for work between 1500–3000 words.

• We’ll be printing in a mix of CMYK and B+W, page dimensions are 160mm by 200mm.

How to Submit

Fill out the submissions form on our Wufoo here.

Hollywood publicity departments are breaking new ground in merchandising, in a heated rivalry for best viral cool girl fashion piece. Right now it’s between the Challengers T-shirt and the Marty Supreme Jacket. I bet whoever worked on Drive is kicking themselves they didn’t send that scorpion jacket to every Oscars voter, or at least everybody in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association; they could have swept.

✰✰✰✰✰

Rather than genre categories, Trinh T. Minh-ha described her films in terms of ‘fluid, interacting movements’. In some films, the world comes to the work through an ‘outside-in’ movement, in others the work reaches out to the world ‘from the inside out’; these motions overlap, flow back and forth in direction, but are usually referred to as ‘documentary’ and ‘fiction’.

✰✰✰✰✰

In YouTube thumbnails people make expressions you’ve never seen in real life, never even seen without that backlight of a screen. Walking past Mr Beast’s face printed on a billboard causes you to shudder. It breaks the social contract. His teeth should not be rendered in a matte material. 

✰✰✰✰✰

A movieola seems so much more glamorous than Adobe® Premiere Pro®. Threading prints between reels, pressing foot pedals, flicking knobs. Marking edits in grease pencil on the image side, felt tip pen on the sound side. Smash cut, straight cut, jump cut, cross cut with a tiny guillotine and some clear tape. Fade to black.

✰✰✰✰✰

Video of your first steps. Video of your first birthday. Video of your attempt to shoplift a persimmon—your hands bringing it into frame, pausing to consider the price, then placing it in the bagging area without a scan, the persimmon’s weight triggering an alarm that calls an employee to look at the footage.