Unusual Calls for Submissions: December Edition

What better way to weather the long winter than by submitting your work? Here are some unusual calls to get you through the short days and long nights.

1. River Styx 2015 Schlafly Beer Micro-Brew Micro-Fiction Contest (flash fiction, deadline December 31, $10 entry fee): “$1500 First Prize plus one case of micro-brewed Schlafly Beer.”

2. Bop Dead City Issue Ten Contest themed “Identity” (fiction + poetry, deadline January 1): ” Do with that theme what you will, but mention in your email that you’d like it to be considered for the contest. As always, they’ll be a fiction winner and a poetry winner. Each will receive $20, a copy of the issue, and gain the people’s ovation and fame forever.”

3. Spark: A Creative Anthology Contest themed “Bridges” (fiction + poetry, deadline January 4): “Bridges take us from here to there. They signify transition, crossing, and connection. Entries in this contest should feature a transition, crossing, connection, or even a literal bridge. Your bridge may be mechanical—as in our featured artwork—or your bridge may be metaphorical, musical, or magical.”

4. The Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers (nonfiction, deadline January 15): “Established in 2005 to honor the memory of Ellen Meloy, the Fund provides support to writers whose work reflects the spirit and passions embodied in Ellen’s writing and her commitment to a ‘deep map of place.’ Ellen’s own map-in-progress was of the desert country she called home.”

5. Jewish Currents Magazine’s Raynes Poetry Prize themed “World to Come” (poetry, deadline January 15, $18 entry fee).

6. Manifest West “Western Weird” vol. 4 (all genres, deadline January 31): “To borrow from the VanderMeer definition for speculative fiction’s ‘New Weird’ we’re creating a new parallel genre for work that subverts the traditional romanticized ideas about place, playing with clichés about The West in order to put these elements to discomfiting, rather than consoling ends. Submissions should deal with the interaction and/or collision of various elements that make up the area of the country known as The West. And for this issue of the series, we encourage submissions that are also off-beat, humorous, or campy.”

7. Dirty Chai “Madness” issue (all genres + art, deadline January 31): “Dirty Chai wants your MADNESS! We’re looking for work that reflects the sort of disillusioned chaos that seems to be wreaking havoc on the world today. Show us your alternative realities; we want to feel what you feel.”

8. pacificREVIEW “Vivarium” issue (all genres + art, deadline February 28): “A vivarium (Latin for ‘place of life’) is an area, usually enclosed, for keeping and raising animals or plants for observation or research. Often, a portion of the ecosystem for a particular species is simulated on a smaller scale, a microcosm with controls for environmental conditions. We, as human beings, create vivariums for both ourselves and other species. In these environments of our own design (zoos, shopping malls, universities, cathedrals, etc.), we breathe simulation, observe phenomena both natural and unnatural, speak in symbols, and cypher our dreams. We are inhabitants of our creations, thriving in the flux between the abstract and the absolute.”

9. SHARKPACK Poetry Review Annual “Cities, Sites” issue (flash fiction + poetry + art, deadline March 15): “Send us your poems, flash fiction, and visual art about Dublin, Atlantis, Raccoon City, the religious instant, garden mausoleums, Boston, easements, Oregon, hallway niches, vaults, the verso of triptychs, New York, a hayloft, Hyrule, Vienna, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a closet, clock parts, the inside of lacquer. And more.”