Call for Submissions: Home is Where You Queer Your Heart Anthology
Author: Edit Team
November 17, 2019
It has often been a matter of survival to leave home and a matter of thriving to make it anew. LGBTQ+ people have a tradition of creating “logical” homes, to borrow Armistead Maupin’s term, when biological families, and therefore the states and territories that legitimize them, have failed to recognize, accept, and protect us. Yes, liberation movements have led to progress, to gay rights, however, with our changing economies, environment, and technologies, what was more equitable then is less so now. How do queer writers negotiate their feelings of home when their nation has further been precluded a place of comfort?
Narratives of departure and arrival have chronicled the formation of present-day communities built on radical acts of queer homemaking. Coastal cities like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are queer sites in our imaginary, but what if such places are inaccessible—you can’t make it there, you’ve been priced out or displaced, or you’re homeless? Because home is not “where you’re from, it’s where you’re at,” says rapper Rakim, we’re reminded of the mental and spiritual energies we harness to be present in the here and now. How are the conditions of the times affecting the way we make and write about home?
Foglifter Press is looking for the variant ways queer writers are exploring these questions and themes of home for an anthology to be released during the 11th hour of the 2020 Presidential election. We seek poets, essayists, storytellers, and writers delving within and in between these spaces. We are especially excited for work that experiments with form in relation to themes of home. Most importantly, we are not interested in a particular style. In fact, we desire to show how complicated these questions of home can be—we celebrate the multiplicity of definition with this anthology.
Prose: up to 8000 words, or 3 flash pieces
Poetry: up to 5 poems, any length
Hybrid: up to 20 pages, in any combination of form, including text-image work
Click here to submit.
