Call for Submissions: Chicken Soup for the Soul

It's time to celebrate! Everyone loves the holidays and making cherished memories. Our holiday editions make wonderful gifts and are so popular that we create a new edition each year. We are now collecting stories for our 2024 HOLIDAY edition that will be published later this year. How do you celebrate the holidays? Are your celebrations very traditional? Do you celebrate in the same way year after year? Or are they very spontaneous and never the same — making new traditions and memories from year to year? We want to hear how you celebrate your holidays. Do you gather with family and friends to share the special spirit of the season at home? Do you travel to far-away places and spend the holidays in a different place each year? Please submit your true stories about the entire December holiday season, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year's festivities too. **If your stories are about celebrating Christmas, please be sure that they are "Santa safe" so that we don't spoil the magic for precocious readers! Here are some suggested topics, but there are so many more ideas that we know you have:   • What celebrating the holidays means to me   • Holiday traditions   • Memories of the holiday season   • The love of family   • Family reunions   • Holiday humor   • Gift giving   • Gift receiving   • Regifting — oh no!   • Decorating... oh how we love to do that!   • Un-decorating... oh how we hate to do that!   • Eat, Eat, Eat... and be merry   • Christmas through the eyes of a child   • Elf on the Shelf fun and games   • Here comes Santa Claus   • Secret Santa fun   • Things that went wrong!   • Holiday food and traditions   • Neighborhood competition for house decorations   • The spontaneous things your family has done   • Funny anecdotes A few guidelines for you and some general information: All submissions need to be true — we do not publish fiction. Stories should be no longer than 1,200 words. Please write in the first person about something that happened to you or someone close to you. Every part of your story must be true. No "composite characters." But yes, you can use a pen name, if necessary, to protect yourself or someone else. If you already submitted your story to this 2024 holiday topic please do not submit it again. We have it in our system, and it will be read by our editors. If your story has been published in a past Chicken Soup for the Soul book, please do not submit it. We will not republish it. If you submitted a story to a previous Chicken Soup for the Soul book and we did not publish it, please submit it to us again if you think it will fit in this holiday edition. Please remember, we no longer publish "as told to" stories. Write your story in the first person. Do not ghostwrite a story for someone else unless you list that person as the author in which case, they will be required to fill out our permission form if the story is selected. If a story was previously published, we will probably not use it unless it ran in a small circulation venue. Let us know where the story was previously published and the approximate exposure it received in the "Comments" section of the submission form. We include stories in our books from as diverse a group of writers as possible, including the LGBTQ community and people of all ethnicities, nationalities, and religions. If your story is chosen, you will be a published author and your bio will be printed in the book if you so choose. You will also receive a check for $250 and 10 free copies of your book, worth more than $160. You will retain the copyright for your story and you will retain the right to resell it or self-publish it. SUBMISSIONS GO TO OUR WEBSITE. The deadline for story submissions is April 30, 2024.   We love to publish your funny stories and we've had great success with all of our humor book titles. Our editors have a great time working on the topic, too! From the feedback we have received, it's obvious that people really do love stories that make them laugh and feel good, so we are doing it again. We're working on a new book of 101 funny stories to be titled Chicken Soup for the Soul: Laughter's Always the Best Medicine which will be released in 2025. We are looking for stories about something that happened to you in your life in your relationship with a partner or spouse, a parent or child, a family member or friend, at work or at home — that made you and the people around you laugh out loud. Did you mean for it to be funny? Maybe not. Sometimes the funniest things were not meant to be funny at all! Did someone make you laugh? Did that other person mean to make you laugh? Did a situation just get out of control? Did a misunderstanding snowball into a comedy of errors? We can't wait to read your true stories. We want them to be silly, outrageous, and hilarious. They absolutely must brighten our day and make us laugh! Here are some suggested topics but we know you can think of many more:   • A slip of the tongue — Oh no, I didn't mean to say that!   • Mistaken identity   • Obsessions and compulsions   • Work whoops   • Pranks that worked — Gotcha!   • Pranks that backfired — Yikes!   • Annoying habits — if you don't stop doing that I'm going to scream!   • Doggone funny   • Getting catty   • That was embarrassing   • Happily ever laughter   • Innocently inappropriate   • I thought I heard you say... but you really said...!   • Senior moments   • Wedding woes   • Funeral foul-ups   • Holiday hiccups and meltdowns   • Kitchen/dinner party accidents   • Sports catastrophes   • Domestic turmoil   • Dating disasters   • Making fun of yourself   • Crazy family fun and foibles — it's all relative   • Moving-day mayhem   • Laughing at "inappropriate" times   • I can't believe I did that!   • Travel turmoil   • Zany vacations   • Any other funny stories that make you laugh — the ones you tell over and over again A few guidelines for you and some general information: Please submit your story using your real name but if your work is selected to be published in the book, we understand that you may want to use a pen name and/or change the names of the people in your story to protect the innocent (or guilty!) and your identity. All submissions need to be true — we do not publish fiction or exaggerations. Stories should be no longer than 1,200 words. If a story was previously published, we will probably not use it unless it ran in a small circulation venue. Let us know where the story was previously published and the approximate exposure it received in the "Comments" section of the submission form. If you already submitted your story to this topic please do not submit it again. We have it in our system and it will be read by our editors. If your story was already published in a past Chicken Soup for the Soul book, please do not re-submit it. We will not publish it again. If you submitted a story to one of our previous Chicken Soup for the Soul book titles and we did not publish it, please feel free to submit it to us again if you think it will fit in this topic. Please remember, we no longer publish "as told to" stories. Write your story in the first person. Do not ghostwrite a story for someone else unless you list that person as the author, in which case they will be required to fill out our permission form if the story is selected. We include stories in our books from as diverse a group of writers as possible, including the LGBTQ community and people of all ethnicities, nationalities, and religions. If your story is chosen, you will be a published author and your bio will be printed in the book if you so choose. You will also receive a check for $250 and 10 free copies of your book, worth more than $160. You will retain the copyright for your story and you will retain the right to resell it or self-publish it. SUBMISSIONS GO TO OUR WEBSITE. The deadline for submissions is APRIL 30, 2024.