Sunday, June 25, 2017

Call for Submissions to Anthology: Shame

Shame: An Anthology
Edited by Charlie Bondhus


Shaming is both a cultural practice and a form of abuse. It’s used by parents, teachers, government, police, social media, healthcare professionals, and countless other entities to punish and to ensure compliance with dominant values. Women, immigrants, people of color, LGBTQIA folks, and people with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to shaming and its long-term effects, not least of which are anxiety and depression.

What We Want:

In this anthology, we hope to challenge the multifaceted culture of shame and the layers of silence surrounding it. We are soliciting poems, stories, and essays that critically confront shame, its causes, and its far-reaching effects. We’re interested in work that addresses shame on the individual level, the systemic level, or both. We want the personal and the theoretical, the visceral and the thought-provoking. We want to know how shame affects the individual but we also want to know how the culture of shame informs and enables imperialism, environmental devastation, mass incarceration, poverty, Trump.


What We Don’t Want:

Although personal narratives—in verse or prose—are certainly welcome, please do not send work whose sole or primary purpose is self-healing. Writing is a powerful therapeutic tool, but we want work that considers audiences beyond the writer.

At the other extreme, while we are interested in analytical essays, we do not want academic writing.

How to Submit:

Poetry: up to 5 poems totaling not more than 10 pages. Poems should be single-spaced.


Fiction and Essays: 1-2 pieces totaling not more than 20 pages. Prose should be double-spaced.

Query for work that exceeds these limits.


Simultaneous submissions and previously published are fine.

Email as an attachment to: 


shameanthology[at]gmail[dot]com (Change [at] to @ and [dot] to . )

Deadline: August 31, 2017

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