Call for Submissions: Spoon Knife 5

The Basics

Autonomous Press seeks submissions of poetry, short fiction, and short memoir pieces for an upcoming anthology, Spoon Knife 5: Liminal.

Scheduled for publication in Fall 2020, this fifth volume of the Spoon Knife Anthology series follows The Spoon Knife Anthology: Tales of Compliance, Defiance, and Resistance (Spring 2016), Spoon Knife 2: Test Chamber (Spring 2017), Spoon Knife 3: Incursions (Fall 2018), Spoon Knife 4: A Neurodivergent Guide to Spacetime (Fall 2019).

Deadline for submissions was Tuesday, December 31, 2019. You can join our email list to become notified when we start seeking submissions for Spoon Knife 6.

What We’re Looking For

limen: Latin, “threshold”

A liminality is a threshold, the place between here and there which is, in itself, both and neither. From it we get the word “subliminal” meaning, literally, “below the threshold of sensation.” A liminal space is a transitional zone. It is at the heart of a ritual or rite of passage, when one is no longer the thing they started as, but has yet to become the thing they will be. To stand at a liminal point is to occupy both sides of a boundary at once. Liminality can be disorienting, unsettling, ambiguous, and uncomfortable, but it can also be freeing, an existence without labels or boxes, or a means to a new becoming.

We are looking for fiction, poetry, and memoir that explores thresholds and liminalities of all kinds — including those not listed here. The work must further intersect with themes of neurodivergence, queerness, and/or the intersections of neurodivergence and queerness. Some examples might be:

  • racial or cultural liminality
  • the experience of occupying liminal space as an individual
  • the experience of collective or cultural liminal spaces, such as demimondes
  • rites of passage, including via formal ritual or ceremony, or as a transition between states of being, locations, moments in time or ages, statuses, or situations
  • sensory phenomena that occur at the threshold of sensation, perhaps sensed by some but not by others
  • metamorphosis or transformation
  • explorations into the subconscious or other borderland spaces
  • ghosts, entities out of phase with the material world, virtual entities, voices, or other characters that exist in threshold or liminal/subliminal spaces
  • doorways, gateways, and the literal and figurative passageways between here and there

The Editors

Spoon Knife 5: Liminal will be edited by Andrew M. Reichart and Dora M. Raymaker

Andrew M. Reichart is managing editor of Argawarga Press, an imprint of Autonomous Press dedicated to genre fiction. He is co-author, with Nick Walker, of the epistolary science fiction novel Insurgent Otherworld and the Weird Luck webcomic. He has also written four genre-blurring novels, Wallflower Assassin and the City of the Watcher trilogy, which will be re-released in new editions by Argawarga Press starting in 2019. For his day job Andrew helps run a small utopian tech firm, and he’s also an activist with a grassroots abolitionist project. He lives in California with his wife and a couple of dogs.

Dora M. Raymaker, PhD, is a scientist, writer, multi-media artist, and activist whose work across disciplines focuses on social justice, critical systems thinking, complexity, and the value of diversity. Dora is an Autistic/queer/genderqueer person living in Portland Oregon, conducting community-engaged research at Portland State University, knitting fractals, and communing with the spirit of the City. Dora’s work includes the novel Hoshi and the Red City Circuit and the short story “Heat Producing Entities” in Spoon Knife 3: Incursions.

Format and Length

Fiction and Memoir: We’re looking 10,000 words or less of fully-polished prose, submitted in standard manuscript format (title page with contact info, double-spaced Times New Roman 12-point font, pages numbered with either title or author’s name in the header.)

Poetry: You may submit up 5 pieces of any length and style, provided they fit the theme of this collection.

All submissions must be in a Word-compatible format (.doc, .docx, .odt).

When and How to Submit

As of Wednesday January 1, 2020 submissions are closed.

Authors will be notified of their acceptance or rejection by Friday, February 28, 2020.

Payment for accepted submissions will be 1 cent per word, to be sent by check during the second quarter of 2020.

Email all submissions to info@autpress.com.

When submitting your work, please put in the subject line one of the following:

    “Spoon Knife 5 Submission – Fiction”

    “Spoon Knife 5 Submission – Memoir”

    “Spoon Knife 5 Submission – Poetry”

Also, please include a cover letter that clearly specifies the name under which you want to be credited, along with a 3-4 sentence bio written in the third person. The name and bio should be typed exactly as you want them to appear in the book.

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