Call for Submissions
We’re not sure who’s writing 2020, but we’re seeing a lot of broken workshop rules here: the stakes are entirely too high, we’re focusing on plot instead of relationships and people, there are too many threads, it’s unclear who the main characters are, it’s copying from recycled storylines, and we really can’t tell where the “narrative arc” is. We’ve got a pandemic, historical worldwide protests, a rogue administration, Karens freaking out over haircuts—and does anyone know the status of the murder hornets? Did we just drop that storyline, or is that gonna show up in the last chapter here, or? We’re just waiting for the red cloaks and lampshade bonnets to appear.
But behind all the headlines, underneath all the tweet wars, there’s another narrative happening to every single one of us. Those are the stories we want—those quiet moments of desperation or joy you’re finding on your daily walk, in your morning cup of coffee, in your nightcap. What are your headlines? What’s been happening between the four walls of your home? What does 2020 look like from your perspective?
We want to read your story in whatever medium you want to tell it. Hit us with your essays, stories, poems, journal entries, voice memos, conversations, songs, photographs, lists, rants, letters, dreams, midnight musings. It doesn’t have to fit into a genre or category. It can fit into every genre and category. We don’t even care if it totally makes sense (2020 doesn’t, why should we?). We’ll publish some of your words and your art online now; and in 2021, we’ll release an anthology we’re calling an emergency coffee table book entitled The Great Pause: 2020 in Rearview.
We want to zero in on the individual stories, zoom in on the quiet day to day. Press pause on the news cycle and the reel of horror. What are you learning about yourself? What are you seeing in the world? What losses have gripped you? What does 2020 look like from your own kitchen window?
Where were you when The Great Pause happened?
We’ll publish some accepted work here in this column, but all accepted will be featured in the special coffee table edition.