#woc creators

[lycanhood]

[was-biomancer]

[jhameia]

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers," by Langston Hughes

Illustrated by Afua Richardson. Buy prints here!

[biomancer]

how to play video for black blocks kickstarter going on now.

[jhameia]

OMG OMG OMG Innsmouth Free Press, you know, the Lovecraftian micro-press run by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, is opening a call for submissions to an ALL-WOMAN LOVECRAFT ANTHOLOGY

She Walks in Shadows, the first all-woman Lovecraft anthology, will hold an open submissions period from November 15, 2014 to December 15, 2014. DO NOT SEND STUFF BEFORE THAT DATE. Keep the following in mind:

Submit short stories inspired by the work of Lovecraft that focus on a woman or female deity. It may be a character from Lovecraft’s work or someone of your own creation. You are not restricted to the 1920s as a setting. Steampunk, dieselpunk, noir, and any other sub-genre you can imagine are fine with us. Give us your best and most polished work. And yes, you must be a woman to submit. Women only.

To avoid the Asenath effect (that means every character in the anthology would be Asenath Waite), we asked the authors who are contributing stories to pick a different character from a Lovecraft story. While you are not bound to these restrictions, we suggest that if you use a character from Lovecraft’s fiction, you avoid the usual suspects (Asenath and Lavinia).

Consider interesting and novel settings for your stories. Surely, strange Lovecraftian entities haunt contemporary Nunavut or the Inca fought strange webbed monstrosities centuries ago. Anne Boleyn, evil sorceress or woman fighting the good fight against the Mi-Go? We may never know. Or maybe we will.

POCs are highly encouraged to send stories. Transgender writers: same thing.

Stories may be sent in French, English, or Spanish. We can read all three languages.

Story length is up to 4,000 words with a pay rate of 6 cents a word (Canadian $, eh). No reprints, please.

Submit your final story as a Word or RTF attachment by the deadline to innsmouthfp(at)gmail(dot)com. Use the subject line: Slush Shadows. Include a cover letter with a biography (Yes, we want to know a bit about you), word count, and your name and contact information. Please use italics as italics, bold as bold, number your pages and the like.

Check out the bold!

[jhameia]

It's here! The sequel to Long Hidden has announced their guidelines and the editors will be Mikki Kendall (karnythia) and Sofia Samatar! 

Who can submit

We welcome stories by authors from all walks of life. We especially encourage submissions from members of marginalized groups within the speculative fiction community, including (but not limited to) people of color; people who are not from or living in the U.S.A.; QUILTBAG and GSM people; people with disabilities, chronic illness, or mental illness; and atheists, agnostics, and members of religious minorities. The protagonists of your story do not have to mirror your own heritage, identities, beliefs, or experiences.

We also especially encourage short story submissions from people who don’t usually write in this format, including poets, playwrights, essayists and authors of historical fiction and historical romance.

Submission deadline and publication schedule

Submissions are due June 30, 2015. If it’s still June 30 in your time zone, you’re good. Acceptance notices will be sent by October 1. The anthology is tentatively slated for a January 2016 release.

Pay and rights

We pay USD 6¢/word for global English first publication rights in print and digital format. The author retains copyright. Payment is upon publication.

Story criteria

Length: 2000-8000 words (FIRM)

Your story must be set before 1935 C.E. (NO exceptions), and take place primarily in our world or an alternate historical version of our world. (Travel to other worlds, other dimensions, Fairyland, the afterlife, etc. is fine but should not be the focus.)

Your protagonists must be young people (under the age of 18) who were marginalized in their time and place. By “marginalized” we mean that they belong to one or more groups of people that were categorically, systematically deprived of rights and/or economic power. Examples in most times and places include enslaved people, indigenous people, queer people, laborers, women, people with disabilities, and people who do not share the local dominant religion, language, or ethnicity. Many people belong to multiple marginalized groups, and many are marginalized in some ways and privileged in others. Your story should acknowledge the complexity and intersectionality of marginalization.

Your story must contain a significant element of science fiction, fantasy, horror, or the weird, without which the story would not work or would be a substantially different story.

All submissions must be in English.

Please note: while we are looking for stories about young people, this is not specifically a YA anthology. We are interested in work that will appeal to a broad audience.

No reprints. No simultaneous submissions.

  Submissions open November 1 and close June 30. Go check out the whole guidelines!

[jhameia]

New World is a black-and-white sci-fi/fantasy comic anthology set to debut in the spring of 2015. Iron Circus Comics is currently seeking 8–10 submissions with the theme of exploration, colonization, conquest, assimilation, "going native," appropriation, imperialism, strained relations... essentially, what happens when mutually un-contacted cultures, continents, and species collide. We want your strangest stories about situations where characters are encountering—and having to deal with—the alien.

Please limit your proposed story to between 3 and 20 black-and-white pages. All participating creators must be over 18 years of age, and able to read and write English fluently. Their proposed stories should be suitable for readers 15 years old and above.

What We Want

All kinds of on-theme stories. Stories about adventure, romance, mystery, slice-of-life—just about anything is okay, as long as it's rooted in what happens when different peoples, species, or worlds intersect.

Complete proposals. This means a title (even just a working title), a premise, an estimated page count between 3 and 20 black-and-white pages, and a beginning, middle, and end, clearly summarized. Examples of the creator's previous work should accompany all proposals, and all proposals should be submitted using this form. The deadline for submissions is November 20th, 2014.

Payment

New World will pay a $50 page rate, plus ten contributor's copies per creator and the perpetual right to buy copies of the anthology for 50% off the cover price for as long as the comic is in print. There will also be a bonus for all contributors if the Kickstarter campaign does well.

Creators' Rights

Creators submit stories to New World with the understanding that, if accepted, they are ceding exclusive first worldwide rights to the story for a full calendar year from the date of publication, and non-exclusive worldwide reprint rights in perpetuity. Intellectual property rights will remain in the hands of the creator. We don't want your characters, just your comics.

Production Size

If your proposal is accepted, the final art must be designed to fit standard American graphic novel dimensions: 6.625" × 10.25". What this means for your production process depends on your choice of medium, but the following guides may be useful.

Iron Circus Comics is run by awesome WOC Spike Trotman, and they recently came out with SMUT PEDDLER 2. 

Check out the whole submissions guidelines!