The Citadel - LACC's Literary Journal
The Citadel is a creative literary journal published by the English & ESL Department at Los Angeles City College. First published in 1962, it was expertly led under the advisement and leadership of the late Professor Sam Eisenstein for many decades. Currently helmed by Dr. Genevieve Patthey, The Citadel prides itself in highlighting students’ literary work in fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
The Citadel is an active journal featuring the creative works of LACC students. It also involves the LACC community at-large, inviting the neighboring communities of Los Feliz, Hollywood, Koreatown, and Silverlake and beyond to publish their works, in the hopes of fostering a community in the literary arts.
The Citadel - 2025
NOTE: We are no longer accepting submissions for the 2024 Citadel. Please revisit this webpage in March 2025 for more details about submitting your prose and poetry for the 2025 edition.
For reference, here are our 2024 Submission Guidelines. The guidelines include information about how to submit, what you can submit, and rules for non-LACC submitters.
For more information, email @email.
The Citadel 2023 - Launch Party
On December 7, 2023, the English & ESL Department celebrated the publication of the newest edition of "The Citadel."
Past Editions
The Citadel 2023
Los Angeles is home to many communities, but what does belonging mean when our places of belonging are changing? This year, climate change brought snow to our valleys, hail to our deserts, a tornado to Montebello, and a springtime super-bloom, and it feels like our tempests are just getting started! Let’s affirm our belonging, let’s embrace our century’s existential challenges, and let’s testify!
The 2023 edition of The Citadel is available for purchase on Amazon here.
The Citadel 2022
The collection of voices within LACC’s The Citadel 2022 reflects faculty, established writers, students, and diverse students including English language learners. Though our contributors come from different walks of life, their stories, poetry and artwork speak to the human condition – life’s struggles and triumphs – that we all share. In our 2022 issue, we invite you to explore a most humorous product review, to celebrate a community’s solidarity through a pandemic lockdown in Shanghai, to witness a father’s testimony about unspeakable grief, and to explore our stories of ongoing struggle and continued survival now that we know breathing anew always comes with risks.
The Citadel's 2022 issue is available for purchase on Amazon.
Note: The Citadel was not published in 2021 due to the pandemic.
The Citadel 2020
The Citadel has been published at Los Angeles City College (LACC) since the 1960s and provides a space for students and the community to share their voices. For this issue, the writers and artists, a culmination of LACC students, faculty, and the Los Angeles community-at-large, have provided their voices in a collection of prose, poetry, and art, illustrating the hardships that have been much of 2020. From first-hand experiences of life in quarantine to the emotional frustrations in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd to personal accounts of witnessing Black Lives Matter protests—these voices make up the rich and diverse population that is Los Angeles, and in particular, the students of Los Angeles City College. The Citadel has always been a place for its writers to share experiences that are both different and common to us all, and with this year’s issue, we hope you can find that commonality but still come away with learning about a new human experience.
The 2020 edition of The Citadel is available for purchase on Amazon here.