About Winnow Literary
Established in 2024, Winnow Literary is an international, interdisciplinary journal of poetry and occupation. Housed within the occupational therapy program (School of Education) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we live at the intersection of healthcare, education, creative expression, and the human experience.
With the term "occupation" we don’t just mean employment. We mean the ordinary, everyday activities people do to fill their time and give their lives a sense of meaning and purpose—whether that is cooking a meal, managing a chronic illness, navigating a rigorous educational curriculum and clinical placements, or putting a child to bed. An “occupation” is everything we need, want, or are expected to do. It is how we express who we are and find where we belong.
Modern healthcare infrastructure has a habit of flattening these profound human experiences into sterile clinical notes or productivity percentages. At Winnow Literary, we believe that poetry is a form of clinical reasoning and creative expression. Our most recent digital issue, guest edited by Dr. Michael Iwama, was published in April, 2026. You can read all our issue archives via https://www.winnowliterary.org/issues
Our Submissions Process
We look for poetry submissions that cover the real, messy range of human activity across the lifespan. We want writing that finds meaning in the mundane details of a routine; the exquisite complexity or quiet frustration in the "simplest" tasks; and the friction that happens when the environments where we live, learn, work, and play interact with our values, roles, and professional identities.
We welcome submissions from all writers—new, emerging, or established. Our pages are a shared space where different corners of the healthcare, education, and creativity ecosystems can merge:
Occupational therapy practitioners, nurses, physicians, social workers, and other interprofessional providers navigating the daily realities of modern care.
OT/OTA faculty, researchers, and students trying to find their professional footing while navigating the "hidden curriculum" and milestones of clinical training.
Past, Present, & Future Clients, Patients, and Families who are actively building their own occupational trajectories and daily lives.
Writers-at-Large: Creative voices from any background exploring themes related to “occupation” across the lifespan.
Please review our submission guidelines, as well as our issue archives for examples of poetry we typically publish. We look forward to reading your work!
We are grateful to the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education Staff Innovation Award Fund and the Brittingham Wisconsin Trust for their generous support of this initiative. The ideas and opinions expressed or implied in Winnow Literary do not represent or intend to represent the views of the University of Wisconsin-Madison or any particular program or institution.
ISSN: 3070-7641
