Category Archives: Prompt

Now on Tap: Submission Calls September 2016

Home Brews

Homebrew: Issue #22 – Of Distance and Discord

“It is wicked & useless, — all these months & months apart from you, all these years with only a glimpse of you in the face of everybody. —Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.” —Rohinton Mistry

We calculate a stretch of space in kilometers and miles, but sometimes distance is constructed invisibly within society and relationships. From lovers in bed falling out of love, to immigrants assimilating into a new language and culture, to lack of accessibility creating inaccessibility for those with disabilities—distance persists even when physical length is absent.

For cahoodaloodaling’s winter 2017 issue, give us literary and visual art about what isolates you from other people. Give us burned bridges, diaspora, visa stamps, i-miss-yous, anxiety meds, awkward frustrations, and ugly-crying loneliness.

Tell us what your distance is made of. We want to see the spaces that don’t exist to the naked eye, and the spaces that do. Come those with long distance: expats, nomads, overseas workers; come those who experience distance through societal constructs, through privilege and disadvantage; come armed with people made for leaving—everyone is welcome. So think “Distance in Translation”; think “The Art of Separation”; think “Distance up Close.”

The distance between people have untold stories often left to hang open. In this issue, we want you to close the gap.

Submissions due 12/17/16. Guest Editor Sade Andria Zabala. Issue live 1/31/17.

 

#TeenTuesdays

We are seeking teen voices on a rolling submission basis. Find out more here.

 

Guest Taps

 

Ryan R. Gibbs Flash Fiction and Photography Contest at New Delta Review. NDR is now accepting submissions for the annual Ryan R. Gibbs Award for Flash Fiction and Photography. For this contest, NDR seeks short fiction (1500 words or less) that stunsa full narrative in a small package, where every sentence contributes something necessary and integral to the whole. NDR is also seeking a series of photographs that will serve as the online cover pages for their journal’s winter issue. Together, the photographs should tell a story, or be centered on a unified theme of the artist’s choosing. Submissions due 10/1/16. Read more & submit at newdeltareview.submittable.com.

Sundress Publications wants your exceptional, non-featured AWP panels! We are seeking a wide variety of perspectives on topics such as publication, graduate school, craft, and more. Our goal is to showcase these panels by hosting roundtable discussions on our official blog. We believe in fostering conversations that inspire, educate, and engage with the writing community in substantial ways. In 2016, our annual roundtable discussion event reached a wide audience, and we are excited to continue and expand upon those discussions with the submissions we feature this year. We value the hard work you put into your panels, and we hope you consider sharing your dedication and expertise with us. Submissions are rolling. Download the press release for more information.

Melancholy Hyperbole is now open for book review queries.

The Afterlife of Discarded Objectsa digital collective storytelling project that curates and archives memories about playing with, collecting, preserving, or making art from what we might label as trash, waste, or unwanted itemsis looking for nonfiction narratives, personal essay/memoir, diary entries, short stories. Contributions can be of any length from a brief recollection (either from childhood or adulthood) of your experience with and memories about a particular object or collection of objects (simply an “I remember when…” kind of entry) to a lengthier piece that takes the shape of an essay or story. Currently no submission deadline. More information at theafterlifeofdiscardedobjects.com.

Pokémon Anthology—edited by Rob Stephens. We are looking for superb poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and art that is inspired by, reacting to, imitating, or otherwise related to Pokémon. Perhaps you write acrostic poems using the names of Pokémon, or non-fiction about how those Pokémon Go kids have taken over your favorite skate park, or fiction inspired by Team Rocket. However closely or weakly associated with Pokémon your work may be, we are interested so long as it is stellar. We encourage parody and criticism of Pokémon. We are not looking for fan fiction, or anything else that might make the good people at Nintendo or Pokémon angry with us. This would include stories in which people or Pokémon are characters, or poems in the voice of Pokémon or Pokémon characters. Submissions due 12/31/16. Read more & submit at pokemonanthology.weebly.com.

And don’t forget to submit to one of our Sister Journals!

Pretty Owl PoetryPretty Owl Poetry is open year-round for submissions of poetry, fiction, and art. Pretty Owl Poetry is an online quarterly journal that publishes new, emerging, and established writers in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts. We support all approaches to writing, be it collaborative or individual. We’re interested in experimental and traditional forms and flash fiction masquerading as poetry, all with a lyrical quality. Please submit all work through our submissions manager, which can be found on our website: prettyowlpoetry.com.

wickedalicemainFounded in 2001, wicked alice is an online journal dedicated to women-centered writing and art. Published under the auspices of dancing girl press & studio and a member of Sundress Publications, the journal seeks to publish work that is fresh, innovative & exciting in a number of creative genres, including poetry, fiction, essays, visual art, multimedia, & hybrid works. Full guidelines can be found at wickedalicezine.tumblr.com.

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Now on Tap: Submission Calls May 2016

Home Brews

Homebrew: Issue #21 – Give It to Me E-gain: The Chapbook Review Issue

For our summer issue we want to read e-chapbooks published from January 2014 to May 2016. Self published is okay, but each chapbook must be available for download online through a publisher or personal website. Chapbooks that are not currently available online do not qualify. We are not interested in your unpublished manuscripts at this time.

SUBMIT ONE CHAPBOOK ONLY. All members of our staff will be reading cover letters this issue—think of it as your back cover. Get our attention with 50-150 words describing your chapbook, a biography, and a link to where your chapbook may be purchased or downloaded online.

Selected e-chapbooks will be showcased in July with a mini review by one of our staff members and a mini feature of selected work (2-3 poems; 1-10 pages of prose).

Submissions due 6/11/16.  Issue live 7/31/16.

 

 

Guest Taps

 

“Unseen” at Melancholy Hyperbole – MH is interested in poetry about longing. This can mean anything from unrequited lust to the loss of a pet. Whatever the subject matter, it must not be boring or corny. Send us your best interpretation of the theme “Unseen”. Submissions due 5/31/16. Read more & submit at melancholyhyperbole.com. **Melancholy Hyperbole is now also open for book review queries.

“Scholarship Applications for BinderCon NYC 2016” via Out of the Binders Scholarship Program. Designed to increase diversity, BinderCon is offering free admission to up to 25 promising writers who might not otherwise be able to attend due to financial hardship. Diversity includes but is not limited to: age; racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds; sexual orientation; gender identity; marital and parental status; disability. The scholarships include free attendance to all the events on Saturday, October 29, and Sunday, October 30, networking opportunities to meet agents and editors, and a ticket to the VIP. Additionally, we are thrilled to offer stipends to select applicants: parents who require financial assistance with childcare and out of town attendees in need of travel assistance. Please indicate if you would like to be considered for any of these stipends. Applications due 5/31/16. For more information & to apply, visit nyc.bindercon.com/apply-scholarship/.

“Firsts” at Pankhearst – anthology edited by Tee Tyson. Firsts is now taking narrative/creative non-fiction pieces of 5,000 words or less about first experiences. Which first time you write about is entirely up to you, but we hear sex, drugs, and rock & roll sell well. Tell us about your first piercing, your first tattoo, your first broken-heart, your first period, your first bout of chemo. Tell us about anything that meant so much to you that you still remember it deep down in your bones. Tell us about something that still makes you laugh. Or hide your face in shame. Submissions due 6/30/16. Read more & submit at pankhearst.wordpress.com.

“90s Pop Culture” at Up the Staircase Quarterly – special themed annual issue. We are seeking poetry and artwork involving and inspired by 90s music, TV shows, movies, fashion, games, technology, food & drink, and trends. Beginning in January, UtSQ will provide editors’ favorites and weekly writing prompts. Submissions due 7/1/16. Read more & submit at  upthestaircase.org.

Open Reading Period at Sundress Publications. Sundress looking for manuscripts of forty-eight to eighty (48-80) single-spaced pages of poetry. Individual pieces or selections may have been previously published in anthologies, chapbooks, print journals, online journals, etc., but cannot have appeared in any full-length collection, including self-published collections. Single-author and collaborative author manuscripts will be considered. All authors are welcome. Sundress is actively seeking collections from writers of color, trans and gender-nonconforming writers, writers with disabilities, and others whose voices are underrepresented in literary publishing. Submissions due 7/31/16. Read the full guidelines at sundresspublications.com.

And don’t forget to submit to one of our Sister Journals!

Pretty Owl PoetryPretty Owl Poetry is open year-round for submissions of poetry, fiction, and art. Pretty Owl Poetry is an online quarterly journal that publishes new, emerging, and established writers in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts. We support all approaches to writing, be it collaborative or individual. We’re interested in experimental and traditional forms and flash fiction masquerading as poetry, all with a lyrical quality. Please submit all work through our submissions manager, which can be found on our website: prettyowlpoetry.com.

wickedalicemainFounded in 2001, wicked alice is an online journal dedicated to women-centered writing and art. Published under the auspices of dancing girl press & studio and a member of Sundress Publications, the journal seeks to publish work that is fresh, innovative & exciting in a number of creative genres, including poetry, fiction, essays, visual art, multimedia, & hybrid works. Full guidelines can be found at wickedalicezine.tumblr.com.

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Now on Tap: Submission Calls March 2016

Home Brews

Homebrew: Issue #21 – Give It to Me E-gain: The Chapbook Review Issue

For our summer issue we want to read e-chapbooks published from January 2014 to May 2016. Self published is okay, but each chapbook must be available for download online through a publisher or personal website. Chapbooks that are not currently available online do not qualify. We are not interested in your unpublished manuscripts at this time.

SUBMIT ONE CHAPBOOK ONLY. All members of our staff will be reading cover letters this issue—think of it as your back cover. Get our attention with 50-150 words describing your chapbook, a biography, and a link to where your chapbook may be purchased or downloaded online.

Selected e-chapbooks will be showcased in July with a mini review by one of our staff members and a mini feature of selected work (2-3 poems; 1-10 pages of prose).

Submissions due 6/11/16.  Issue live 7/31/16.

 

 

Guest Taps

OUTSpoken by Sundress Academy for the Arts
LGBTQ writers from all over the country can submit a wide range of work to OUTSpoken, including poetry, nonfiction, spoken word, and video submissions of a monologue, dramatic piece, or film.  Writers can submit up to three poems, 1,200 words of prose, or five minutes of performance or film clips. Winners will receive publication in Stirring: A Literary Collection and free admission to the June, 2016 OUTSpoken performance in Knoxville. All submissions should be sent with third-person bio to outspoken@sundresspublications.com. Submissions due 3/31/16. For more information on OUTSpoken, visit sundresspublications.com.

“Curious Specimens” at Sundress Publications – edited by Jennifer Hanks. Wunderkammer-themed e-anthology. We want your Wonder Room’s creepiest inhabitants—think the Mütter Museum, reanimated Fiji Mermaids, and all creatures caught between life and death. While we’d love to see your poetry and flash fiction, we also welcome ephemera. Send us excerpts from taxidermy pamphlets, specimen lists, and medical notes. May your most unsettling work find a home with us: bottled, hand-labeled, and doused in formaldehyde. Please submit no more than 3-5 poems or 2 flash fiction pieces as an attachment to anthology@sundresspublications.com with the subject line Curious Specimens_LAST NAME. Include a brief cover letter and bio. Submissions due 4/1/16. For more information, visit sundresspublications.com.

“Deranged” at Pankhearst – edited by Kate Garrett and Rachel Nix
Deranged needs poetry about breaking rules, gender nonconformity, and/or women (cis or trans, we don’t care) in the arts who have done those things down the centuries. We don’t care if you personally identify as female, male, cis, trans, non-binary, or none of the above. Yes, the “deranged” comment was very generally thrown at women who write poems, but as far as we’re concerned, everyone should be breaking social rules and feeling free to ignore the concept of “normal”. This isn’t an -ist/ism/y anthology, unless creative anarchy counts. People doing what’s expected of them and fitting into boxes, regardless of gender identity, is part of the problem. Submit 1-6 poems by email. Submissions due 4/29/16. For more information, and to submit, visit pankhearst.wordpress.com.

“90s Pop Culture” at Up the Staircase Quarterly – special themed annual issue. We are seeking poetry and artwork involving and inspired by 90s music, TV shows, movies, fashion, games, technology, food & drink, and trends. Beginning in January, UtSQ will provide editors’ favorites and weekly writing prompts. Submissions due 7/1/16. Read more & submit at upthestaircase.org.

 

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Now on Tap: Submission Calls Jan. 2016

Home Brews

Just Tapped: Issue #21 – Give It to Me E-gain: The Chapbook Review Issue

For our summer issue we want to read e-chapbooks published from January 2014 to May 2016. Self published is okay, but each chapbook must be available for download online through a publisher or personal website. Chapbooks that are not currently available online do not qualify. We are not interested in your unpublished manuscripts at this time.

SUBMIT ONE CHAPBOOK ONLY. All members of our staff will be reading cover letters this issue—think of it as your back cover. Get our attention with 50-150 words describing your chapbook, a biography, and a link to where your chapbook may be purchased or downloaded online.

Selected e-chapbooks will be showcased in July with a mini review by one of our staff members and a mini feature of selected work (2-3 poems; 1-10 pages of prose).

Submissions due 6/11/16.  Issue live 7/31/16.

 

Issue #20 – Trigger Warning

Paul Gilmartin once wrote, “I cannot stand small talk, because I feel like there’s an elephant standing in the room shitting all over everything and nobody is saying anything. I’m just dying to say, ‘Hey, do you ever feel like jumping off a bridge?’ or ‘Do you feel an emptiness inside your chest at night that is going to swallow you?’ But you can’t say that at a cocktail party.”

For this issue of cahoodaloodaling, we want you to send us your art and writing about everything you can’t say at a cocktail party. Send us your letters, your poems, your paintings, your drawings, your collages and essays. Send us your hearts. Send us what you’ve never been able to speak about, the things that wound you and threaten to bring you under.

This is a safe place. A place where you can let go of your secrets about anything at all that has triggered or traumatized you, be it abuse, an eating disorder, a miscarriage or abortion, monsters that hid beneath your bed in the form of humans. Sometimes it’s not an elephant in the room but another person, or a poem you can’t write, a piece of art you couldn’t create.

This issue is where you can put to rest all the times you felt like jumping off a bridge.

Submissions due 3/19/16. Guest editor Meggie Royer. Issue live 4/30/16.

 

Guest Taps

“Life During Wartime” at Pankhearst – edited by Evangeline Jennings. Anthology of prose only. No minimum length. A tentative maximum of 10,000 words. All stories must be set in America some time after the new President has taken office. Imagine a country run by Donald Trump, the Brothers Koch, and the Open Carry Mouthbreathers who think it all went wrong when people stopped whuppin’ slaves and women were allowed to wear shoes. The people who think the answer to school shootings is to give teachers guns. Imagine The Holy American Empire: black lives, brown lives, and poor lives don’t matter, and everybody knows and acts accordingly; you’re trying to raise a family, finding it harder every day, worrying perpetually about your monthly payments; you’re about to be put on the train “home”, even though you were born in Illinois. Yes, we’re talking immediate future dystopia blues. Submissions due 1/31/16. Read more & submit at pankhearst.wordpress.com.

“See Into the Dark” at Pankhearst – Slim Volume #4, edited by Kate Garrett. Anthology of poetry (40 lines or less) and flash fiction (750 words or less). Fear is something slightly different for all of us. This will be a book of oddities and causes for alarm. Serial killers? Ghosts? Demonic possessions? Monsters under the bed? Kafkaesque? Maybe you have a strangely creepy story or poem you wouldn’t consider horror at all. All okay, but as always, please keep realism involved in the proceedings: if you’re going to be otherworldly, make sure it could happen in this one. (No sparkly vampires.) Send up to 5 poems or 3 flash fictions – or a reasonable mix of the two. Submissions due 2/5/16. Read more & submit at pankhearst.wordpress.com.

Summer Artist Residencies at Firefly Farms – Sundress Academy for the Arts, Knoxville, TN. SAFTA is currently accepting applications for our summer residency period (May 30th to August 28th) for short-term artists’ residencies in creative writing, visual art, film/theater, music, and more. The SAFTA farmhouse is located on a working farm less than a half hour from downtown Knoxville, an exciting and creative city of 200,000 in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. Each residency includes a room of one’s own, access to a communal kitchen, bathroom, office, and living space, plus wireless internet and cable. The length of a residency can run from one to week to two months. Fellowships and scholarships are available those with financial need as well as writers and artists of color. Applications for summer residencies due 3/15/16. For more information and to apply, visit sundressacademyforthearts.com.

“Curious Specimens” at Sundress Publications – edited by Jennifer Hanks. Wunderkammer-themed e-anthology. We want your Wonder Room’s creepiest inhabitants—think the Mütter Museum, reanimated Fiji Mermaids, and all creatures caught between life and death. While we’d love to see your poetry and flash fiction, we also welcome ephemera. Send us excerpts from taxidermy pamphlets, specimen lists, and medical notes. May your most unsettling work find a home with us: bottled, hand-labeled, and doused in formaldehyde. Please submit no more than 3-5 poems or 2 flash fiction pieces as an attachment to anthology@sundresspublications.com with the subject line Curious Specimens_LAST NAME. Include a brief cover letter and bio. Submissions due 4/1/16. For more information, visit sundresspublications.com.

“90s Pop Culture” at Up the Staircase Quarterly – special themed annual issue. We are seeking poetry and artwork involving and inspired by 90s music, TV shows, movies, fashion, games, technology, food & drink, and trends. Beginning in January, UtSQ will provide editors’ favorites and weekly writing prompts. Submissions due 7/1/16. Read more & submit at upthestaircase.org.

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Current Submission Calls

We are now open for our Spring issue, Trigger Warning! Of course, we are still open for our Winter submission call, Writers Create: A Winter Maker’s Fair, and we’ve added a guest tap from Pankhearst, America Is Not The World, edited by our very own Rachel Nix.

Issue #19 – Writers Create: A Winter Makers’ Fair

Writers spend a lot of time writing, and writing about writing. What are your other creative pursuits? Artists spend a lot of time writing about their work. How? This special issue of cahoodaloodaling is interested in the intersection of art and writing—writers who create in other forms, and artists who write. We want craft essays and interviews about what your art means to you as a maker or how your art impacts your writing, or the ways you find yourself writing about your art; tutorials for others to follow, to engage in your craft; photographs of your creations with brief descriptions and creation stories; stories or poems about the art of making; any combination of the above.

Submissions due 12/12/15. Guest Editor M. Mack. Issue live 1/31/16.

Issue #20 – Trigger Warning

Paul Gilmartin once wrote, “I cannot stand small talk, because I feel like there’s an elephant standing in the room shitting all over everything and nobody is saying anything. I’m just dying to say, ‘Hey, do you ever feel like jumping off a bridge?’ or ‘Do you feel an emptiness inside your chest at night that is going to swallow you?’ But you can’t say that at a cocktail party.”

For this issue of cahoodaloodaling, we want you to send us your art and writing about everything you can’t say at a cocktail party. Send us your letters, your poems, your paintings, your drawings, your collages and essays. Send us your hearts. Send us what you’ve never been able to speak about, the things that wound you and threaten to bring you under.

This is a safe place. A place where you can let go of your secrets about anything at all that has triggered or traumatized you, be it abuse, an eating disorder, a miscarriage or abortion, monsters that hid beneath your bed in the form of humans. Sometimes it’s not an elephant in the room but another person, or a poem you can’t write, a piece of art you couldn’t create.

This issue is where you can put to rest all the times you felt like jumping off a bridge.

Submissions due 3/19/16. Guest editor Meggie Royer. Issue live 4/30/16.

Guest Tap

“America Is Not The World” at Pankhearst – Anthology edited by Rachel Nix. This will be an international collection. We aren’t inviting a debate for or against the States; we want to hear about your stomping grounds, your views. By all means, if you have an opinion about America, do tell; if you don’t give a rip, that’s cool. Elaborate or don’t. But don’t feel obligated to write about America. It is not the world. Write about your world, your way. Tell us why you’re at war with it or how you survive in it. Tell us your history, glorious as it is, or crumbled and begging for revolution. Write about home, wherever it is. We want real stories, those that aren’t interrupted by commercial breaks or campaigns. Submissions due 1/4/16. Read more & submit at Pankhearst.

 

Please review our submission guidelines before submitting.

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Interview with Guest Editor Laura Madeline Wiseman

Yonder SmRaquel Thorne: In Queen of the Platform you told the story of you great-great-grandmother, Matilda Fletcher Wiseman, a suffragist lecturer. Why do you think it’s important for us to retell stories?

mugshot2014 madelineLaura Madeline Wiseman: To write Queen of the Platform, I began a journey in which I researched a suffragist and lecturer, Matilda Fletcher Wiseman, who was also my great-great-grandmother, a woman about which very little was written. The family members who introduced me to her said only that, “She spoke at Chautauquas while her stepchildren sang and danced.” They knew little about Matilda, but one of them allowed me to borrow the scrapbook Matilda kept for the first five years of her career. In this scrapbook she pasted announcements of her talks, her essays that were published in the Iowa State Register (later renamed The Des Moines Register in 1903) and excerpts from her poems and lectures that were reprinted in newspapers. The more I researched her, the more I wanted to know, primarily because I had never known that a woman in my family spoke to support herself and her family in a time when women were not the primary breadwinners. In 1869 at the age of twenty-six she started speaking, beginning a forty-year career on the lecture-circuit, authoring several books, and inventing. She patented her design for a travel trunk that rolled, one that would enable women travelers like herself to move such a heavy object with ease. This research and writing gave me new insight into the lives of female ancestors, as well as women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women who Matilda joined on stage. I had to tell Matilda’s story, because I had to know Matilda’s story myself. The story told in Queen of the Platform is not the only possible story to tell about Matilda’s life, which I one of the reasons why I find retellings so proactive and necessary. Writers have the opportunity recreate the historical past, especially retellings that might be missing from the historical record. For example, I just started reading Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings, a retelling about the life of Sarah Grimke. I read about Sarah Grimke in college in a women’s studies class on the history of women’s suffrage. I find reading a novel inspired by such a world exciting because it complicates and expands what I know.

Raquel Thorne: In Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience you recast Bluebeard. Why was it important for you to reframe Bluebeard from a bloody monster to the object of his wives’ love and desire? For me, it’s lines like “You’re dangerous, I say, to those you marry” that devictimize these women. They become active participants.

Laura Madeline Wiseman: My book Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience grew out of my work with Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence. By the time I started researching what would become WWR—a task that took seven years to complete—I already had intimate experience working with survivors and resistors of gender violence. As an undergraduate at Iowa State University, I first volunteered in a women’s crisis shelter and participated in events like Take Back the Night. I continued this volunteer work as I completed an MA in women’s studies and a PhD in English. Because I had a small part in the vital force that seeks to help women resist gender violence and because I was in a privileged place—a doctoral student with an assistantship and fellowships—I wanted to see what else I might be able to do. That what else was the anthology. But that wasn’t the only what else, as a writer and poet, the imagined voices of women who survive such situations kept coming to me. I wrote the chapbook First Wife that tells the story of Lilith, Adam’s first wife in Eden. I wrote a sequence of poems on mermaids in the book Drink that gives voice to all those women swimming below the waters in myth. I wrote Fatal Effects that charts the love of three sisters who each marry the same man upon the demise of the sister who preceded her because I wanted to know what they had to say. When I was doing research for the book and reading the numerous retellings of the bluebeard myth, both those by recent writers and those of the original lore, I felt most troubled by the stories that cast bluebeard’s wives as sisters. Writers often imagine themselves inside the heads of their characters. I found myself wondering as I wrote, if I was such a sister, wouldn’t I notice that my brother-in-law had killed my sibling? And if not, why would I be attracted to my late sister’s widower? What sorts of stories would be available me, if I was among such sisters, about the possibilities of love? What sorts of men and the behaviors of men would such sisters see as normal and normalized, but more importantly desirable? What sorts of social systems might be in place that convince women like them that they’d brought the violence on themselves by how they dressed or acted, where they came from and where they hoped to go? What sorts of victim-blaming stories might permeate such a world were sisters would marry the murderer of their own kin?

I didn’t have to look far for such a world. We live there. We live in a culture that often blames women for the violence they experience, that suggests women ask for rape by what they wear, that condemn women for staying with violent men rather than asking men why they rape or asking men why they use physical and sexual violence to control those they say they love. I wanted to see what that world would like under the plotlines of bluebeard.

After the book came out and after hosting a series of readings from Women Write Resistance last fall, I was doing research for a conference paper. I did a search in Google to research if, indeed, men still murder multiple women, if such representations beyond literature, if bluebeard still lingers, or at least a contemporary version of him. I found that he does.

The first hit on my google search was of a man, whom one week after the Women Write Resistance readings in the same town, murdered a woman in a hotel room, a murdering that lead police to the other six women he’d recently slain in town, their bodies dumped in abandoned buildings and weed-choked lots. He strangled them. He tied them up. He left their lifeless bodies in showers with the water running. He killed each of them, one after another, like bluebeard, leaving a trail of dead women in his wake. According to the piece in the newspaper, the police suspected that he murdered more than the seven women. They believe this man has been involved in the murder of countless others, stretching back decades, from Indiana all the way to Texas. Perhaps most chillingly, most like the versions of the bluebeard story where bluebeard doesn’t just kill his wives and leave them tied up and hanging from hooks or chopped up in a vat of blood, but the versions where he bakes and eats them, the murderous man in had an online name he uses to connect with such future women. His online name and persona? Big Boy Appetite.

Raquel Thorne:  If you could include pieces from other journals to have in our issue, what might they be?

Laura Madeline Wiseman: Next month, I’m presenting at the Steel Pen conference with a group of writers who have new and published work on retellings. Panelists will discuss the craft of such writings and read from their work as they engage with the questions: What is the process for writing poems based on research and pre-existing texts? What kind of research is required to (re)tell a historical kinship between historical luminaries? How does a poet navigate fact and (in)accuracy when writing about the past? How does the influence of the world outside the poet hinder or enrich the truth as it is conveyed in poetry of (re)telling? What are the strategies of other contemporary writers who do similar work on the historical record? At what points can a writer depart from fact in the service of the story that wants to be (re)told?

I’m eagerly anticipating the panel. In thinking about this question, I asked them to share some of their recent retell work. Ivan Young has a poem called “Thirteen Stories of Finding Jesus” forthcoming in Passages North. It explores biblical stories of Jesus in a modern setting. Lindsay Lusby has a (re)telling of The Wizard of Oz in The Wolf Skin. She also has a poem that is a (re)telling of the traditional Grimm brothers’ fairy tale “The Maiden Without Hands” in The Feminist Wire. She also has poems (re)telling The Silence of the Lambs forthcoming in Tinderbox Poetry Journal and Third Point Press. Cat Dixon has a work that retells the Medea story in the journal Midnight Circus. Her chapbook Our End has Brought the Spring released this year from Finishing Line Press retells the story of Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler’s longtime companion. One of poem from that chapbook appears in Linden Avenue Literary Journal.

Beyond poetry and prose, I’m especially drawn to work that retells or reconsiders stories visually. Editor, writers, and artist Sally Deskins teamed up with artist Lauren Rinaldi to curate the show Les Femmes Folles: TALES in West Virginia earlier this summer at the Monongalia Art Center. I’d hoped to be able to see the show in person, but unfortunately I could not. Luckily, I had the opportunity to follow the show and the coverage of the show online, including this piece in Quail Bell Magazine that discusses the artists featured as well as several pieces in Les Femmes Folles. Though the show didn’t focus the historical specifically, it did focus on retelling the female body, in challenging the stories told about what it means to be female in our culture by offering up visual stories that resist and trouble those otherwise available to us now. Art included Launa Bacon’s painting that revisits iconic imagery of the 1950s and many provocative reimaginings of the female body such as Courtney Kenny Porto’s tonal sketches, contemplative and evocative photographs by Christie Neptune and those by Cathleen Parra, Marisa Lewon’s bodies in canvas and thread, and paintings by Chuka Susan Chesney, Cheryl Angel, and Marlana Adele Vassar. Other work in the show included abstract art by Shelia Grasbarsky and Jacqueline Ferrante, Kim Darling’s mixed-media, and Michelle Furlong’s photography.

One artist, Tracy Brown, who explores and challenges the images offered to women in media and fashion, offered a particularly evocative painting on the theme of retelling. Her piece “Beware” features a woman striding forward in tall Maryjane heals and short ruffled dress, while carrying a handbag with the digital icon of an exclamation mark inside a yellow triangle. The green paint across the woman’s forehead and the juxtaposition of the woman’s attire against the backdrop of nature scene adds to the tension of the painting, as if she’s walking away from the stories told about women’s dress and presentation in the media, but a walk that means such stories compel her to look again, even as she resists that siren call.

Finally, the show included work by the curators—body prints by Deskins and sketches and paintings by Rinaldi. Deskins’ work “Teen Years” is particularly interesting, when considering how we retell not only the stories told about the bodies of young women, but also how we imagine our own young bodies. Her piece is a collage of images—journals with notes scrawled, paint splotches, watercolor marks, and photographs of the young artist, some strong and challenging, others that mimic the sensual poses often shown in the media.

Though I’m not sure all of this work could fit into one issue, it does suggest to me the compelling, rich body of retelling work that is being produced right now by artists, writers, and poets. I’m honored to be guest editing this issue and look forward to sharing the issue later this year.

*****

We’re still accepting submissions for Historical (Re)Tell until 9/19/15.

Tell the truth but tell it slant, writes Emily Dickinson. For this issue, we’re looking for telling retelling of the historic, tales that offer what wasn’t said but should’ve been, what wasn’t written down but likely happened, whose voices speak that didn’t speak because there wasn’t a platform for them. We want poetry, prose, and nonfiction, music, art, collaborations, and hybrid. We want myths and legends retold from other voices, new perspectives, counter intuitive stances. Accurate, inaccurate, or close, we want work that explores how facts become transformed into the tales, histories, and family stories that inform how we tell our worlds.

Submit

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Current Submission Calls

Issue #18 – Historical (Re)Tell

Tell the truth but tell it slant, writes Emily Dickinson. For this issue, we’re looking for telling retelling of the historic, tales that offer what wasn’t said but should’ve been, what wasn’t written down but likely happened, whose voices speak that didn’t speak because there wasn’t a platform for them. We want poetry, prose, and nonfiction, music, art, collaborations, and hybrid. We want myths and legends retold from other voices, new perspectives, counter intuitive stances. Accurate, inaccurate, or close, we want work that explores how facts become transformed into the tales, histories, and family stories that inform how we tell our worlds.

Submissions due 9/19/15. Guest Editor Laura Madeline Wiseman. Issue live 10/31/15.

In Cahoots Contest 2015

In Cahoots Flier 2015 sm1) No entrance fee.
2) Simultaneous submissions okay (but if your submission is published elsewhere first, it will be disqualified for First Prize, so please notify us immediately if it is picked up elsewhere.)
3) New collaborative work only. This means all submissions must be created by 2+ people.
4) Submit 1-3 pieces in a single email. Each piece may have a different collaborative team.
5) All submissions must include a literary component but may include or be paired with a visual or audio component.
6) This is not prompt based – so there are no form nor subject guidelines.
All submissions will also be considered for normal publication.

View special submission guidelines for In Cahoots.

 

Issue #19 – Writers Create: A Winter Makers’ Fair

Writers spend a lot of time writing, and writing about writing. What are your other creative pursuits? Artists spend a lot of time writing about their work. How? This special issue of cahoodaloodaling is interested in the intersection of art and writing—writers who create in other forms, and artists who write. We want craft essays and interviews about what your art means to you as a maker or how your art impacts your writing, or the ways you find yourself writing about your art; tutorials for others to follow, to engage in your craft; photographs of your creations with brief descriptions and creation stories; stories or poems about the art of making; any combination of the above.

Submissions due 12/12/15. Guest Editor M. Mack. Issue live 1/31/16.

We are actively seeking cover and feature art for future issues.

Please review our submission guidelines before submitting.

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Guest Staff Announcements

Issue #14 – The Animal Becomes Us – SUBMISSIONS OPEN

We’re leaving this wide open to interpretation. Consider this your open invitation to send anything from light verse about your animal companion to speculative were-animal stories. Submissions due 9/30/14. Issue live 10/31/14.

Kristin

About guest editor Kristin Nehs:

Kristin grew up tangled between Tennessee and Florida and has the Dollywood memorabilia and sawgrass scars to prove it. She holds an MFA from Oregon State in one hand and a cello in the other. Her interests include sordid human affairs and pontificating. In her spare time she wrangles cats.


2014 In Cahoots Collaboration Contest – SUBMISSIONS OPEN

cahooladoodaling_commission_by_moophles-d7l2ntpid_pic_by_mirz_alt-d5e95s2 About guest judges Michelle Lehmann and James Lehmann:

Michelle & James are a husband & wife writing team. Experts at collaboration both between themselves and with artists, we featured their project, Relativity, in our first Special Feature. They have recently self-published their fourth book.

Michelle Lehmann, a/k/a Mirz, is a mom, author and digital artist who lives in a suburb of Chicago. A secretary by day, she spends her nights wiping runny noses, pushing pixels, and trying to save the world — all of which she does while consuming ungodly amounts of coffee. Inspired by a love of the short stories of Ray Bradbury, her writing career (if one would call it that) has been planted firmly in the speculative genre, with works mainly in science-fiction, fantasy, and goofy smiley stories. Since her dreams of becoming a superhero never took flight, she did the next best thing and created the fiction serial, Relativity, which can read at Blacktorrent.us. She recently had her first works formerly published in the profits-for-charity anthology, Cat Tails: A Collection of Littpurrature. Her other works, which she assures no animals were harmed during the creation of, can be found on various sites around the web, including deviantart.com, mirz.us, and bitmapworld.com.

id_pic_by_ravenswd-d5e9f4zJames Lehmann, a/k/a Ravenswd started crafting stories as soon as he was able to hold a pen, but never finished anything until he acquired his Apple II computer — leading to a love of writing literature and computer code. A freelance computer programmer by profession, he is mostly a stay-at-home dad who gets a ton of inspiration from his kids and TV Tropes. He has a particular love of science-fiction and most of his works have been in that genre. Creating the character of Ravenswood Cadavre (because the name sounded cool), he never imagined it would lead him on a speculative writing journey that would span over 20 years and result in the superhero serial, Relativity, which he produces with his wife. He is also a connoisseur of webcomics, even co-creating one of his own with the emoticon strip, Bitmapworld. His works have appeared in several small publications you probably have never heard of, including The Torch and The Fiction Primer. Most of his writing and digital works can be found on Blacktorrent.us and deviantArt.com.

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Prompt #10 – Inspired by the Artist

 

Submissions due September 16th

For our 10th issue, we want great writing inspired by other great (although perhaps unknown) art. Did another poem inspire you to write something? Did a photograph inspire a short story? If it’s a famous piece of work, say Van Gogh, make sure you include the picture for us, otherwise, please give us a description of the work. Other “inspirations” can include a song or album (send us a quote!), or perhaps it’s an artist’s life or style that inspired you.

Please review our submission guidelines. Also, for each submission, please let us know a little more about it. Consider: How did this work inspire you? Where were you? What did you want to demonstrate? Maybe it was a poem you’d wanted to write forever; perhaps it was a short story that was inspired after the 103rd time you’d heard that song on the radio.

Here are some of our favorite examples:

Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes by Billy Collins
Love by Heather Bell
Why I Am Not a Painter by Frank O’Hara
Jack London by Red Shuttleworth (“Look Inside” Page 28)

We look forward to your poetry and prose!

 

Also, we are still taking submissions for our collaborative contest.  Check it out! http://cahoodaloodaling.wordpress.com/in-cahoots-contest/

$50.00 first place prize, no entrance fee.

 

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Prompt #6 – Fragments

Submissions due: 12/31/12

Selected Poems to be published: 1/31/12 (or thereabouts)

Do you have a partial poem/flash fiction/diary entry that you were meaning to do something with, but you can’t seem to complete it? Is it too good to get rid of? We are looking for well-crafted, wild, resonating, unfinished work. Your submission may be several fragments thrown together, one almost finished piece, a snapshot of a journal, etc. We do not want overly crafted pieces or stories, but are looking for more snapshots, moods, feelings, etc.

Send up to 2 pages of fragments.  Please make sure they are clearly labeled if they are to be run as a collection or considered individually. Your fragment(s) may or may not look anything like the example below.

For example, below this would be considered one “Fragment”:

Poisons

  1. I can write a poem about billboards,
    God hates you if you kill your womb,
    fetus’ rights, ten little fingers, ten little toes,
    the parasites from the mistakes you made,
    they’re human too.Tiny tongues in tiny cheeks,
    free choice is a bloody mess.
  2. Stop signs.  I crawl, my clutch goes halty
    like sputtering breath, I take corners
    in heels, in reckless abandon,
    in full blown stanzas, I drive back roads,
    so near intimate with deers
    and airbags.The cop who pulls me over
    doesn’t think I’m as cute
    as I think I am.
  1. Me. If I say it fast enough
    it doesn’t sound lonely.

While, below this would be considered multiple fragments for consideration:

Fragment 1

I can write a poem about billboards,
God hates you if you kill your womb,
fetus’ rights, ten little fingers, ten little toes,
the parasites from the mistakes you made,
they’re human too.

Tiny tongues in tiny cheeks,
free choice is a bloody mess.

Fragment 2

Stop signs.  I crawl, my clutch goes halty
like sputtering breath, I take corners
in heels, in reckless abandon,
in full blown stanzas, I drive back roads,
so near intimate with deers
and airbags.

The cop who pulls me over
doesn’t think I’m as cute
as I think I am.

Fragment 3

Me. If I say it fast enough
it doesn’t sound lonely.

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