Deadline: Oct. 11, 2019.
Jalada seeks short fiction, essays, creative nonfiction, and poetry that play with the very concept of the body and bodies. The team wants creative submissions that (re)imagine and (re)define bodies; pieces that look at bodies beyond flesh and bone; pieces that look at bodies in and through flesh and bone; that challenge human’s preconceived notions of bodies and spark conversations about how our bodies, and the ways we conceptualize them, impact our everyday lives and worlds.
It wants pieces that are curious about where bodies sit, how they feel, what makes them hurt, what makes them love, what makes them them. What makes a body a body? Must it be living? Must it be human? When does a human body cease being human? Is your body yours and is it yours alone? When does a body become bodies, and why? What do bodies do? What do bodies do that a single body cannot? What bodies matter, to whom, and why? If everyone has a body, and everybody can become bodies, why should we care? Simply: the team wants everything body.
What They Love
The Jalada team members are not genre snobs—as long as it’s good. They love work that takes risks and makes no apologies. They want words that soothe and words that stab; stories that provoke and poems that simmer; work that makes us laugh and cry and think and remember and change.
They are curious as to how bodies relate to gender, sexuality, sex, kink, disability, illness including mental illness, health, athleticism, religion, belonging, isolation, fetishization, body hair, fat, circumcision, shit, shame, pride, menopause, food, impairment, colorism, Blackness, race, identity, borders, nationality, art, pain, menstruation, violence, pleasure, death, birth, childbearing, sleep, consciousness, aging, non-human bodies, alien bodies, animal bodies, bodies of work, bodies of water, physical and metaphysical and conceptual bodies, and many other things that they’ll never know to be curious about without your piece.
They believe literature of the highest quality can only exist when many different bodies are empowered to tell many different stories. As such, they recognize the importance of marginalized voices and strongly encourage submissions by members of the LGBTQIA+ community, women and nonbinary folks, people living with disability, and anyone else who identifies with a historically under-heard group. Whoever you are, however you identify, your submission is welcome.
That said, it is your body of work. Write about what you wish to write. They don’t expect anyone to write to their identity unless that’s what you want to write on.
Submission Guidelines
- The submission deadline is 11:59 pm (EAT) on Wednesday, October 11th, 2019.
- Please submit your work in a Word (docx) document formatted to the genre-specific guidelines below. Please, no PDFs or other file formats for written submissions.
- Work should be previously unpublished. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please withdraw your work from consideration if accepted elsewhere.
- Writers whose work is accepted for publication will receive an honorarium between 100 and 150 USD, depending on length, budget constraints, and other factors.
Prose Guidelines
- Only 1 story submission per writer
- No more than 10,000 words
- Spacing: 1.5 line spacing
- Font: Arial in 12 pt.
- Submit one document only, using Microsoft Word (no PDFs).
Poetry Guidelines
- No more than 3 poems per submission
- No more than 5 pages
- Submit one Word document only, even if submitting more than one poem.
- Font: 12 pt.
Submit via Submittable.