The Spy in the Sandwich

Saturday, December 02, 2006

10:51 AM | Call for Submissions to First Person Queer

This just emailed in. Some of you might be interested...

First Person Queer: Who We Are, Where We've Come From, Where We're Going
Edited by Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel

For publication in Fall 2007 by Arsenal Pulp Press

We're looking for short (under 1500 words) first person essays from across the spectrum of queer experience that depict the diversity, the complexity, and the excitement of contemporary GLBTQ life. We want to be surprised, and to surprise our readers, with intensely personal experiences from writers of diverse genders, ages, races, and orientations, informing us about unusual aspects of our lives.

Comprehending queer codes, exulting in nonconformity, expressing gender deviance, confronting assimilation, having to "pass": write about the theory of your life. Discuss sissyhood, parenting skills, sexual experiences (play or work), urban pleasures, personal choices: write about the practice of your life. We've all got a story to tell. Share yours. Express your "I".

Topic and tone -- witty, reflective, satirical, learned -- are open to your imaginations, as long as the writing is real. What's going to make us sit up and pay attention are essays that go beyond the traditional tales of coming out, first love, breaking up, the death of a lover, the acceptance -- or not -- of parents. These are important stories, and intriguing twists on them will be considered, but they've been done; we're unlikely to include more than one or two.

So: offer us something different, something less easy to categorize. Give us a glimpse of an instructive physical moment or a transcendent emotional passage from your dyke, fag, tranny, bi, or otherwise queer life. Prose or graphic/comix narratives, no poetry.

Submit your work by email, as an attachment in .doc format, with author's last name and story title in the file name: Surname-Title.doc, to Richard Labonte at: fpqueer(at)gmail (dot)com.

Please include contact details and bio in the .doc file, not just in your email; submissions that are considered will be separated from the emails.

Deadline: 28 February 2007.

Payment: a small honorarium and one copy of the book will be paid. (Please note that payment is in Canadian funds.)

As an anthology for a Canadian publisher, preference will be given to submissions from Canadian writers. But the anthology is open to submissions from all writers, and is actively interested in non-North American writers.

About the Editors

Richard Labonte has been the editor of the Best Gay Erotica series since 1997, and of the anthologies Country Boys and Hot Gay Erotica. He writes the syndicated review column "Book Marks" for Q Syndicate and also the Gay Men's Edition of Books to Watch Out For. For many years the general manager of A Different Light Bookstores, he moved home to Ontario, Canada in 2001, where he lives with his husband, Asa Dean Liles, and their dog Zak.

Lawrence Schimel is an award-winning author and anthologist who has published over 80 books in many different genres, including PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality (with Carol Queen), Best Date Ever: True Stories That Celebrate Gay Relations, The Drag Quen of Elfland, Things Invisible to See: Lesbian and Gay Tales of Magic Realism, The Mammoth Book of New Gay Erotica, Switch Hitters: Lesbians Write Gay Male Erotica and Gay Men Write Lesbian Erotica (with Carol Queen), and Two Boys in Love, among others. Since 1999, he has lived in Madrid, Spain.

Together, Labonte and Schimel are the editors of The Future is Queer, also published by Arsenal Pulp Press.

About the Publisher

Arsenal Pulp Press is an independent Canadian publisher located in Vancouver, British Columbia, which has published titles such as Queer View Mirror edited by James Johnstone and Karen X. Tulchinsky, Out/Lines: Underground Gay Graphics From Before Stonewall, With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Writes Porn edited by Amber Dawn and Trish Kelley, and the Little Sisters Classics series, among many other queer-interest titles.

Labels: literature, queer