Monday, May 23, 2022

Call for Submissions on Theme of "Ghosts & Gossip": Kaleidoscoped Magazine

Kaleidoscoped Magazine Call for Submissions

Ghosts & Gossip

​Reading period open April 1-June 15

While often perceived as unnecessary, unkind, and belittling, gossip can serve as a bonding agent between others, a comradery. Gossip is not idle talk but dendrites branching and connecting as substitute for touch during years of isolation. Commiseration alchemized to solace. Gossip is community. To gossip can provide a healing, one of levity and mirth or of health and intimacy. But gossip is a balm, not a remedy. Loneliness, mourning, and rage haunt in the background of the chatter. Like spectral beings, they re-emerge when we least expect them to. Loved ones pass. Crisis arises. Memories twist and pull in ways we don’t understand. These ghosts decide to stay whether we like it or not.

Ghosts and gossip weave together. Gossip starts as euphoric and sweet entry points for confessions massacring our insides out. Ghosts shake our shoulders for attention. Feed them sacrifices. Gossip gives rise to rumor, becoming a ghost itself.

And so we declare ghosts as genre, gossip as genre. Tell us about your hauntings, your voicemails and saved memos, your ephemera, your fortune cookies and your tarot cards. Gives us your secrets and your safe zones. We are particularly interested in experimental and hybrid works across all mediums: send the almost, the unexplainable, the confessions, the collaged. Send us your poems, your verse, your translations, your drawn, your ballads, your photographs, your tea, and your double scoops with no napkins.

​This issue's conception and call for submissions created by editor Alissa Tu

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

  • Because we encourage cross-genre and undefinable work, we offer two ways of measuring the parameters of your piece: by word count, and alternatively, by the time needed to engage with your piece. We accept submissions that (loosely) fit the parameters below or measures to about 15 minutes of reading/listening/viewing/etc.1-5 poems up to ten pages in length, and/or up to 3000 words of prose (in a single work or combined total).
  • Visual, video, sound, interactive & multi-media: up to 3 works per submission, or up to 15 minutes combined time of engagement.
  • ​Please email your submission to:

 kaleidoscopedmag@gmail.com

In the subject line, include your name and the title of your work. In the body of the email, include your submission file (pdf, doc, or jpg preferred, other formats accepted if necessary to your piece), a brief bio, and an answer to the following question: what does it mean to "be kaleidoscoped”? Please note that each of these elements is required for your submission to be considered.

If you have published in KALEIDOSCOPED MAG before, please wait two years before submitting again. We love you and we thank you for gifting us with your work, and we hope to keep adding many new writers & artists to our collective, growing and ever-shifting.

​​To keep this publication free & accessible, there is no submission fee for sending in your work. However, please consider an optional donation of $3-$10 to the local San Diego organization Native Like Water, whose aim is to "prepare Indigenous youth and adult volunteers in science, outdoor education, conservation, composition, wellness, and cultural self-exploration." Find more information about this organization at https://www.nativelikewater.org.

We are excited to announce that with the support of the UCSD Arts & Humanities Award we are able to offer each contributor selected for our second issue a payment of $20.

UC San Diego is situated on the unceded territory of the Kumeyaay nation.

No comments: