Call for Submissions on Theme of: "The Ground Beneath Us: Place, Power, and Resistance": About Place Journal

The Ground Beneath Us: Place, Power, and Resistance

“We stand on ancestral land. We walk through stolen cities. We return to sacred places. We resist with our bodies, with our breath, with our stories.”

In this current political moment marked by state repression, attacks on bodily autonomy, climate collapse, and rising authoritarianism, we are reminded that place is never neutral. It is shaped by power, haunted by memory, and pulsing with resistance.

This remarkable issue invites work that explores place as a site of struggle and survival. We seek writing and art that engage with land, home, borders, environment, and community, not as static backdrops, but as living terrains that hold grief, memory, and the seeds of transformation.

We welcome poetry, essays, fiction, hybrid work, visual art, and multimedia submissions from those rooted in activism, spirit, and justice. Emerging and established artists are encouraged to submit. In addition, we especially encourage submissions from BIPOC, Pasifika, LGBTQIA2S+, disabled, immigrant, and frontline communities whose connections to place are marked by struggle, resilience, and reclamation.

Here are some questions we want to delve deeper into that we invite you to meditate on. How do we resist displacement, erasure, or environmental destruction through our connection to place? What are the geographies of protest, healing, and communal care in your work? How do we carry the memory of land we no longer live on or are barred from returning to? What does it mean to reimagine maps, neighborhoods, and sacred ground in this political climate? How do we fight for place while honoring those who fought before us?

Possible themes include: 

• Land justice and Indigenous sovereignty

• Environmental racism and ecological grief

• Gentrification, housing, and community defense

1. Queer and trans geographies

• Diaspora, exile, and return

• Spiritual and ancestral ties to place

• Borders, surveillance, and belonging

We look forward to seeing your work!

Work must be submitted via Submittable by March 10, 2026.