Barking Sycamores: Breakthrough Neurodivergent Lit

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[Pictured: a portion of Barking Sycamores’ Issue 14 cover.] 

This spring, Barking Sycamores approaches two major milestones. For one, the journal celebrates its fourth anniversary on April 1! Also, March marks two years since it joined the AutPress family. In that time, this literary journal centering neurodivergent voices has published 13 issues to date, with number 14 slated to roll out on March 1. We’ve released two annual anthologies, with a third coming this fall. Right now, we’d like to talk a little bit about Sycamores and each anthology.

Year One: Debuting Poetry and Artwork

Barking Sycamores said “Hello, world!” in April 2014, with one primary mission: to change the public discourse about autism by centering autistic creators and publishing their poetry and artwork. The journal later expanded to include short fiction and to welcome writers with all forms of neurodivergence. Although disability literature has a rich history, Sycamores was the first journal of its kind to focus solely on neurodivergent authors and artists.

Naturally, this focus meshed well with our mission, both with the primary imprint and NeuroQueer Books. We published the Barking Sycamores: Year One anthology in Spring 2016 and brought the journal on board, along with its founder N.I. Nicholson (who’s now the NeuroQueer Books imprint editor). This volume includes work by the Puzzlebox Collective, Thomas Park, Heather Dorn, and more than 35 other contributors.

Year Two: Expanding a Literary Mission

Barking Sycamores: Year Two continues the journal’s mission while expanding into newer literary territory. Issue 8 saw the addition of creative non-fiction, and it’s reflected in this second volume packed with first-hand neurodivergent narratives, poems, short stories, and artwork. Year Two includes work by more than 30 contributors such as Erin Human, Amy Sequenzia, Sean J. Mahoney, and Matthew Robb Brown.

The Story Behind the Name

The journal’s name was deliberately chosen to sound strange but also characterizes the American sycamore tree without its bark: symbolic of what fellow AutPress editor Nick Walker called the “intense and chaotic nature of autistic sensory and cognitive experience” in his well-known essay, “What Is Autism?”. It was also originally meant to poke fun at the idea that autistic artistic communication is a fluke, a savant ability, or meaningless gibberish.

You certainly won’t forget the journal’s name or the work from neurodivergent contributors publishing in the online journal and in the yearly anthology. If you haven’t read Sycamores, pick up Year One, Year Two, or get both volumes with the Barking Sycamores Collection available in the AutPress store.

 

Call for Submissions: Spoon Knife 4

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The Basics

Submissions for Spoon Knife 4 are now closed.  Authors will be notified of their acceptance or rejection during the first half of 2019.

Submissions for Spoon Knife 5: Liminal are open until December 31, 2019. See the call for submissions here.

Autonomous Press seeks submissions of poetry, short fiction, and short memoir pieces for an upcoming anthology, Spoon Knife 4: A Neurodivergent Guide to Spacetime.

Scheduled for publication in Fall 2019, this fourth volume of the Spoon Knife Anthology series follows The Spoon Knife Anthology: Tales of Compliance, Defiance, and Resistance (2016), Spoon Knife 2: Test Chamber (2017), and Spoon Knife 3: Incursions (2018).

Please email the editors at sk4.spacetime@gmail.com for updates on this project, and you may wish to see the call for submissions for Spoon Knife 5: Liminal as well.

Sign up for the email list to receive news on these and other projects.

What We’re Looking For

As people, we’re drawn to both telling stories and listening to the stories of others. Navigating life can be joyous, frustrating, frightening, sorrowful, and complex. Among all these realities we usually find one truth that always remains: the unknown. And what do we do when confronted with the unknown? We might fear it, try to avoid it entirely, or charge towards it with aplomb or gusto.

Speculative fiction has long dealt with themes surrounding the unknown. Sci-fi and fantasy themes have allowed their creators to conceptualize how space and time can exist, merge, warp, or even disappear in strange and terrifying ways. How in the hell do you map a black hole? Can you really kill your own grandfather? And what happens if your past self travels forward and meets the present iteration of you? What do past, present, and future even mean?

Those are just a few thoughts, but we’re basically looking for work that examines and explores two fundamental ideas: time and space. Moreover, we want work that engages with themes of neurodivergence, queerness, and/or the intersections of neurodivergence and queerness. These might include, but are not limited to, themes such as:

  • Travel through time and space via technological methods (vortex manipulators, star ships, big blue boxes, etc.)
  • Involuntary acts of time travel through PTSD-related mental/emotional trauma
  • Deliberately journeying/revisiting through memories in one’s own timeline
  • “Slipping” through time and/or space via astral projection, quantum jumping, or other non-tech means (such as in Octavia Butler’s Kindred)
  • Outcomes and consequences of changing past events
  • Meeting one’s past/future selves

Spoon Knife 4: A Neurodivergent Guide to Spacetime is edited by B. Allen and Dora Raymaker, based on the theme created by N.I. Nicholson. You can contact the editors at sk4.spacetime@gmail.com.

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

Submissions for Spoon Knife 4 are now closed. Authors will be notified of their acceptance or rejection during the first half of 2019.

Submissions for Spoon Knife 5: Liminal are open until December 31, 2019. See the call for submissions here.

Payment for accepted submissions will be 1 cent per word, to be sent by check.

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

  • “Spoon Knife 4 Submission – Fiction”
  • “Spoon Knife 4 Submission – Memoir”
  • “Spoon Knife 4 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.

Unsticking Your Brain: Or, Writing Poems When You Haven’t Been Writing Poems

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Let’s face it. If you write poetry, your craft depends just as much on practicum as it does on ideas. When you’re lacking one or both these elements, attempting to generate a new poem can feel a little Sisyphean…or like moving through a swimming pool full of cement…or…well, pick any metaphor you like, but you get our point. Remember when we told you to ignore the well-intentioned “your first drafts are crap” advice and to temporarily send your inner critic packing? Both points are always salient when creating new material, but in this post, we’re offering a couple of tips to help you get your poetry brain unstuck.

Do You Need to Shift Gears?

You might rely on a few writing prompt sources. Maybe it’s a high-profile author’s blog, or you and your friends give each other jump-off points for writing. They’re all great resources, but what if you’re staring at your chosen prompt and no words come out? You could have one or more of these common problems going on:

  1. The pesky editor in your brain
  2. You’re legit tired, stressed out or feeling a lack of focus
  3. Your mind is stuck in “logic” mode

Neurodivergent brains all operate in unique ways, but your mental processes to create poetry might drastically differ from your fiction-crafting methods. If you’ve been focusing on short stories or a novel, it may just be a matter of “shifting” into poetic mode. Keep in mind, however, that lines between genres can easily blur. You may reread a 300-word piece you just finished and wonder whether it’s a long micro-fic or a prose poem. That’s a grey area, one in which you’ll make the final call when it comes to genres and classification.

Stop Making Sense

If you don’t write every day or you’re a professional writer generating specialized types of content, you may not be creating poetry on a daily basis. Rather than stare at a blank page and struggle, now may be the time to suspend your “logic brain” and stop making sense. Try freewriting sans prompt, letting whatever is in your mind leak out. You’ve probably heard of “stream of consciousness” writing, and yes, that’s the idea here. Also, this isn’t the time to worry about subject-verb agreement or whether your first draft even makes sense. In fact, if it doesn’t make sense at first, that could open a door to fashioning a new work you might not have otherwise created.

Don’t Forget to Read

You’ve heard the oft-repeated advice that writers need to read. Of course, we at AutPress are happy to help with some suggestions. If you love genre-blending or hopping between genres, Ada Hoffman’s Monsters in My Mind is a great addition to your collection. It’s packed with 49 pieces that include short stories, flash fiction, microfiction, poetry, and prose poems, spanning universes of speculative fiction and plunging deep into the human imagination. We’ve also got more poetry, weird fiction, and more in the AutPress store.

Author Interview: Ada Hoffmann Discusses Monsters in My Mind and Other Projects

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We sat down with Ada Hoffmann, author of Monsters in My Mind, to talk about speculative fiction, the state of the writing world, and what’s next.

AutPress: Why MONSTERS IN MY MIND? Why speculative fiction generally, and why this collection?

Ada: I grew up around speculative fiction. It’s a childhood love, and one of those things that was always there. Literary realism never felt grounded to me – it felt small, stifled. Consciously cut off from all the realms of imagination that could have been.

I’ve been publishing short speculative fiction and poetry since 2010. Short fiction is a delight to me – I probably read more of it than novels. I’ve also written a lot, and I wanted to make that writing tangible. A physical object that I could hold in my hands and give to people.

I organized MONSTERS IN MY MIND around a loose theme appropriate to NeuroQueer Books – the theme of being different, monstrous, or out of place, and hoping to somehow be accepted that way. I grouped stories and poems so that they moved through different ways of engaging with that theme in a way that felt, in a very abstract sense, like its own story. A few short works I loved didn’t make the cut, not because there was anything wrong with them, but because they didn’t fit into that “story”. Maybe they’ll go into a future book!

As for the title, I don’t remember where I got it, but it happened fairly late in production. I’m not the first person to have used the phrase. If you want to assume cryptamnesia, then it probably comes from the song “Happy Hurts,” by Icon For Hire.

AutPress: What are some of your favorite sources of inspiration? What/Who else do you read or recommend?

Ada: Sometimes ideas just happen. It isn’t glamorous. “You Have to Follow the Rules” was based on a dream that my friend A. Merc Rustad had. “The Chartreuse Monster” came partly from a random number generator. “Centipede Girl” was inspired by an actual centipede that crawled on my keyboard, and “The Mother of All Squid Builds a Library” was based on a list of tropes that another friend of mine liked. One of my best ways to generate ideas is by going to a classical music concert, where I’m forced to sit in a chair for two hours, listen to pleasant noises, and let my mind wander. And my go-to method for coming up with more poetry is just to binge-read any poetry at hand until my mind starts automatically arranging its thoughts into verse.

In terms of other authors who inspire me, Catherynne M. Valente’s collection “A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects” was the reason I got serious about poetry. Meda Kahn’s short story “Difference of Opinion” pushed me to be better and braver about autism representation. I would love one day to build worlds like China Miéville, develop characters like Lois McMaster Bujold, dispense careful wisdom like Rose Lemberg, build up a sense of scale like Robert Charles Wilson, quip and twist the plot like Joss Whedon on a good day, and tap into the depths of my id like Tanith Lee. Anybody wanting more of the queer and neurodivergent themes from MONSTERS IN MY MIND should check out A. Merc Rustad and Bogi Takács, among many others.

AutPress: What’s the most unexpected thing that happened while you were working on this collection (or any particular part of it)?

Ada: Once I had all the stories, putting the collection together was pretty straightforward. Though – one unexpected thing that happened while the collection came together was that I landed an agent for a novel I’d written. That was very distracting, in a good way.

[Full Disclosure: The interviewer was a beta reader for this novel, which fully deserves all the love an agent can give it.]

AutPress: Where is spec fic/dark fic/weird fiction headed? What does it need more of?

Ada: I don’t think spec fic will ever go in just one direction. It’s a big tent with a huge number of things going on.

It’s clear, though, that at least some parts of spec fic are moving towards more diversity and better representation. There’s an increased interest in diverse characters, in diverse authors, in concepts like #ownvoices – and also in the range of new ideas, not just writing about themselves, that marginalized authors bring to the table. I’m really enjoying all the recent counter-Lovecraftian fiction, for instance. Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Innsmouth Free Press was doing this for years, but now it’s been joined by some higher-profile friends: Ruthanna Emrys’s “Innsmouth Legacy” series and Victor LaValle’s “The Ballad of Black Tom”, to name two.

Of course, this trend comes with pushback; you don’t need me to tell you the story of the Sad Puppies. It would be naive, especially in 2017, to say that things will clearly keep changing for the better. But we’ll see what happens.

AutPress: What are you currently working on, and what’s next?

Ada: Well, my agent is shopping my novel around, and I’m replenishing my store of short fiction and poetry. I’ve written some really daring short pieces that I’m very excited to share when they find a home. Two collaborations that I love are coming out in the next year or so – one with Jacqueline Flay in Persistent Visions, the other with A. Merc Rustad in Lightspeed. I’m also working on a collection of dinosaur poetry called “Million-Year Elegies”. That’s about 75% done, and a few early pieces from that series are already published online, if you want a teaser. Of course, I’m also still working on my PhD research, in which I teach computers to write their own poetry. My biggest challenge is finding time for all these projects and book promo, too!

Visit Ada Hoffmann online at http://www.ada-hoffmann.com. Pick up a copy of Monsters in My Mind on Amazon or via the AutPress store.

Mental Monsters and Snapshot Mindscapes

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Short fiction has gotten the short end of the stick for much of its existence, despite the fact that it is perennially popular with critics and prize committees. While there are a number of short story artists who have forged a career in the form, many publishers shy away from volumes of short tales unless they come from an established writer. Fans of weird fiction, slipstream, speculative fiction, and horror realize the problem with this, though. So do fans. In an age where a number of writers are choosing to make their careers in short ebooks first, publishers need to sit up and take notice.

That’s why Autonomous Press has worked to invest in poetry and short fiction. We want to help a large number of fresh new voices find their audiences, and we want to connect the ways that readers and writers interact in this digital age to the distribution that makes it accessible to a wider reading community. That’s why we started the Spoon Knife series, and it’s why we started cultivating short works from individual artists.

We’re still just starting out as a company, but we have already managed to bring a couple of wonderful books by individual writers to the market, including Fable the Poet’s initially self-published chapbook. Fable is currently the poet laureate of his hometown, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and his insightful characterization and frank discussion of topics like trauma, race, and mental health provide readers and listeners with a unique point of view that flows like music.

For those in traditional genres looking to devour short tales that are a little less directly reflective of everyday life, we have Ada Hoffmann’s Monsters in My Mind, which brings together over 40 strange tales that span horror, fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction, and more. These are never before published works, and you can find more notes about each one on her blog.

Whether you are looking into our anthology series, the collection of work curated through Barking Sycamores, or these individually authored books, you are going to find that AutPress has taken steps to make NeuroQueer Books a place for unique points of view. We’re looking forward to bringing you more of that in the new year with additional volumes of Barking Sycamores and Spoon Knife. Until then, check out Ada’s book, as well as the new novel by Verity Reynolds.

Mixing It Up: Strange Storytelling and Weird Works

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Say the word “storytelling” and a few different images might come to your mind. You may think of relaxing on the couch with an absorbing book or picture a group of entranced listeners sitting around a fire and drinking in a chilling ghost story. With our rich creative history, we’ve developed multifarious tools to tell our tales. Whether it’s a single-author book or an anthology, mixing up genres can provide fresh perspectives on storytelling.

Moving Beyond Genres With Monsters

Ada Hoffman’s latest release Monsters in My Mind is a great example of how both short stories and poetry become useful narrative tools. As a mix of flash fiction, prose poems, microfiction, and other forms, it’s evident of the delicious weirdness of which the human imagination is capable. Just as our reality can be neat and structured while messy, strange, and frightening by turns, Hoffman’s book is a unique container into which she’s packed artifacts like parallel universes, fantasy quests, reimaged fairytales, almost-sentient AI, velociraptors, and even cephalopods. This anthology is eldritch in all the right places, spilling far past the borders of the expected and predictable.

Strange Tales in Multi-Author Anthologies

The mix of voices in a multi-author collection results in a fabulous blend of shifting sceneries, intersecting timelines, and fascinating folk. For proof of that, just look at Spoon Knife 2: Test Chamber. Woven together by editors Dani Alexis Ryskamp and Sam Harvey, the collection features individuals all attempting to navigate the test chambers in which they’ve been placed. For some, the goal is mere survival while others seek to escape and subvert. Examples from the cast of characters in this anthology include an early hominid targeted by the cruel leader of her hunting party, an agent in an interdimensional police force, autistic transgender women navigating landscapes of social connection and desire, and a guy who talks to his wheelchair.

Add Our Wonderful Weird Books to Your Shelves

Whether it’s oral histories born before the advent of the written word, captivating novels, or lengthy posts on one’s social media pages, we naturally engage in narrative acts. Sometimes, our singular or collective experiences extend into realms that are wild, unusual, or fundamentally bizarre. At AutPress, we’re a huge fan of strange worlds, weird storytelling, and genre-blurring books. Be sure to pick up a copy of Monsters in My Mind, Spoon Knife 2: Test Chamber, Barking Sycamores: Year Two and other anthologies from the AutPress store.

 

Writing the Marathon: The Pros and Cons of NaNoWriMo

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For many first time writers, November has a new name: NaNoWriMo, or “National Novel Writing Month.” Sometimes shortened just to NaNo, the goal is to write an entire novel in just one month. There’s a community and a wide range of advice, but as with any novel endeavor, the bulk of the work is done alone – just you and your writing tools of choice.

If you’ve been thinking about writing a novel, NaNo might sound intriguing – and the fact that several novels that started as NaNo projects went on to become bestsellers might sweeten the deal. Should you NaNo your way to author success?

Here are the pros and cons of NaNoWriMo, from the perspective of editors who read and publish a lot of work from first time writers.

Pros, or “NANO YES”

It gets you writing.

Every novel in existence was written in only one way: the writer(s) sat down and wrote it. Every word.

When you’re new to novel-writing, a structured system like NaNo can help you turn writing into a ritual and a habit. Because the word count demands are so high, you really have no choice but to write every day if your goal is to have a novel-length work in 30 days. If you’re having trouble holding yourself to that schedule, NaNo can help.

There’s no time for the inner critic.

The novels we publish through NeuroQueer Books run about 70,000 words. Divided by the 30 days in November, that’s 2,334 words a day – about 7-10 double-spaced typed pages.

That’s a lot of fiction in one day, especially for a first time writer. There’s no time to question whether it’s any good; you just need to get it done. If your inner critic is keeping you from writing a word, though, speed might be the answer to quieting it down.

Cons, or “NANO NO”

The community can derail you.

Every year, NaNo writers sign up online with every intention of finishing their project, only to get sidetracked by the community aspect of the event. Writing is hard. It’s much easier to join message boards to talk about how hard writing is. If socialization or the shiny new things of the Internet regularly get in your way as a writer, consider skipping NaNo – or doing it without formally signing up.

For the love of cheese, please edit.

No matter who you are or what you’ve written, any novel produced in spurts of 2,500 words a day is going to need editing before it can be published. You’re going to need to cut, rearrange, rewrite, add, and polish – and it’s going to take a lot longer than a month to get your manuscript ready to be seen. Please do not send the results to any publisher until you’re confident you’ve told a solid, engaging story. (Unfortunately, there’s no National Novel Editing Month!)

Is NaNo right for you? Try it and find out. It might be the tool you need to go from first time writer to debut published author.

What to Read to Get Into the Halloween Spirit

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Tired of the ordinary Halloween horror film fest? It’s time to get weird.

“Weird fiction” is a genre that blends the macabre with the supernatural, the mythical, the scientific…and the just plain weird. Since the Halloween season is a chance to let your imagination roam, don’t limit it to the usual ghosts, goblins, and axe-wielding murderers. Here’s what to read to get weird.

Monsters in My Mind

Ada Hoffmann’s short fiction and poetry anthology, Monsters in My Mind, appears in mid-October from NeuroQueer Books. Ada is a master of the weird, and the pieces in this collection encompass everything from mermaids to extradimensional worlds to sentient AI. The format makes them great for a quick dose of weirdness in your day – but once you pick this anthology up, good luck putting it down.

Weird Luck

Part of weird fiction’s weirdness is its refusal to stay politely within the bounds of any one format. The Weird Luck universe is an example: there’s a webcomic, a serialized novel on Patreon, multiple short stories hidden in various publications, and multiple novels, which will be re-released shortly. The Weird Luck universe has many entry points, and it’s a delight no matter which way you look at it.

Spoon Knife

Some folks read weird literature to step outside their daily existence and sense of self; others read it to step further in. If you’re in the latter category, the Spoon Knife anthology series is your weird fiction home. Blending fiction, memoir, and poetry with themes ranging from the technological to the mythic, the series just keeps getting weirder…and, for some readers, more relatable. Spoon Knife 3: Incursions comes out in 2018, so spend this fall getting caught up!

Whether your house is already decked out in skeletons and pumpkin spice or you’re still trying to decide what to do for Halloween, some weird reading can get you into the spirit and provide a cozy hobby for the fall.

 

 

Call for Submissions: Spoon Knife 3

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Call for Submissions

Autonomous Press is seeking submissions of short fiction, poetry, and short memoir for our upcoming anthology, Spoon Knife 3: Incursions.

Spoon Knife 3: Incursions will be published in Spring 2018. It will be the third volume of our annual literary anthology, following The Spoon Knife Anthology: Tales of Compliance, Defiance, and Resistance (Spring 2016) and Spoon Knife 2: Test Chamber (Spring 2017).

The Spoon Knife anthology series is published under Autonomous Press’ NeuroQueer Books imprint. All submissions should in some way touch upon or be relevant to the themes of neurodivergence, queerness, and/or the intersections of neurodivergence and queerness. These themes can be engaged with either directly or through metaphor.

For Spoon Knife 3: Incursions, we’re looking for pieces that focus on the theme of incursions by one reality into another.

Authors are encouraged to interpret this theme broadly and creatively. An incursion from another reality could mean a great many things, including but definitely not limited to:

•  Experiences such as hearing voices, hallucinations, visions, or so-called “psychotic breaks.”

•  Possession or visitation by spirits, ghosts, angels, demons, gods, or other otherworldly presences.

•  People or things (like artifacts or creatures) showing up from another world in the literal sense – from alternate universes, for instance.

•  People or things showing up from another world in the more figurative sense – for instance, the impact a visitor from a foreign culture has on a relatively homogeneous community, or the impact a forbidden book has on a sheltered mind.

And these are just a few examples of the vast array of possible interpretations.

 

The Editors

Every volume of Spoon Knife has a different team of co-editors. The editors for Spoon Knife 3: Incursions are Nick Walker and Andrew M. Reichart.

Nick Walker is an autistic genderqueer author, educator, and aikido teacher, and one of the founding editors of Autonomous Press. He is a faculty member at California Institute of Integral Studies and Sofia University, and senior instructor of the Aikido Shusekai dojo in Berkeley, California.

Andrew M. Reichart writes books, stories, and comics that blur the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. New editions of his books are forthcoming from Autonomous Press, starting in 2017. He lives in California with his wife and a couple of dogs.

 

Format and Length

Fiction and memoir pieces must meet the following criteria:

•  12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced.

•  Indent the first line of each paragraph, and do not put blank lines between paragraphs.

•  Make the first page a cover page with title and author contact info.

•  Author’s name and page number in the top right corner of every page

•  Use Oxford commas.

•  The entire manuscript should be thoroughly and carefully spell-checked and proofread (we recommend it be reviewed multiple times, by the author and by at least two other readers who have a sharp critical eye for detail, punctuation, grammar, and clarity of writing).

We will not accept manuscripts that do not meet all of these criteria, or that contain multiple spelling, grammar, and/or punctuation errors.

Fiction and memoir pieces should be 10,000 words or less. If you’re an author whom we’ve previously published or whose submission the editors have specifically solicited, and you need more than 10,000 words to tell your story properly, we may be able to make an exception about the word limit for you – please contact the editors about it.

If you’re submitting poetry, you may submit up to 5 poems of any length and style, provided all the poems are consistent with the theme of the anthology. Poems should also have the author’s name in the header of each page, as well as a cover page with author contact info. Poetry does not need to be double-spaced.

All submissions must be in .doc or .docx format, or in a fully Word-compatible file format like .odt or .rtf.

 

When and How to Submit

We are accepting submissions now. All submissions are due by Saturday, September 30, 2017.

Authors will be notified of their acceptance or rejection no later than November 1, 2017.

Payment for accepted submissions will be 1 cent per word, to be sent by check during the first quarter of 2018.

Email all submissions to nick@autpress.com.

The title of your email must be either “Spoon Knife 3 Submission – Fiction,” “Spoon Knife 3 Submission – Memoir,” or “Spoon Knife 3 Submission – Poetry.” Using one of these three email titles ensures that your submission will end up in the right place.

Please include a cover letter that makes it clear exactly what name you wish to be credited under, and that gives 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.

 

 

Call For Submissions and Guest Editor Announcement for Spoon Knife 2: Test Chamber

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The Editors

We are happy to announce the editors for the second volume in the Spoon Knife Anthology series.

Dani Alexis Ryskamp is an editor and the Legal Coordinator for Autonomous Press and the author of “My Mother GLaDOS,” which appears in The Spoon Knife Anthology.  Her research on neurodivergence and poetry also appears in The Hilltop Review.  She actually wrote her own contributor bio for this post, which is a first.

Sam Harvey  is a graduate student in rhetoric and professional communication at Saint Cloud State University.  He begins his Ph.D. work in rhetoric and professional communication at Iowa State University in Fall 2016.  Sam is also the author of “Journey to Self-Love in a Culture Demanding Self-Hate,” which appears in The Spoon Knife Anthology. He is feeling very odd writing his own bio and is going to proceed to go hide now.

The Call for Submissions

We are seeking submissions of poetry, fiction, and memoir for Spoon Knife 2: Test Chamber.  This book will be the second in the series, following The Spoon Knife Anthology, released in March 2016 by NeuroQueer books.  As part of the NeuroQueer family, Spoon Knife 2 focuses on neurodivergence and disability as they intersect and interact with queer issues.  This includes queering disability and neurodivergence, as well as discussing how neurodivergence functions or fits with other aspects of a queer identity.

The phrase “test chamber” may be read in myriad ways: as an adjective + noun denoting a place (“the subject was placed in the test chamber”), as an imperative verb + direct object (“to find weakness, test (the) chamber”), as a compound verb (“test-chamber a round to check that your slide isn’t jammed”), and others not imagined here.  These meanings are dynamic.  That is, they coexist, interact, change, and complicate one another in various ways.

For the second volume in the Spoon Knife series, we seek to feature works that focus on one or more of the meanings of “test chamber” as it/they relate to neurodivergence, disability, and/or queer issues.  What does it mean to be inside (or outside) the “test chamber”?  To test the chamber?  To test-chamber or to be test-chambered?  More importantly, how do we approach the boundaries of neurodivergence, queerness, or both in a way that questions, subverts, blurs, or even embraces them – forcing ourselves and others to question the existence or permanence of the “test chamber” itself?

Or, if you prefer an alternate way in: play Portal.  Write accordingly.

While we will consider any submissions that are on-topic and we do wish to solicit voices from a broad range of neurodivergent and disabled perspectives, preference will be given to authors who clearly identify as neuroqueer and whose work demonstrates a neuroqueer point of view.

Length and Format

Fiction and Memoir: 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: Up to 5 pieces of any length and style, provided they use the prompt above as a touchstone.

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

Deadline and Terms

Submissions are due by Monday, August 22, 2016.  Authors will be notified of their acceptance or rejection no later than October 15, 2016.  Please include a cover letter that makes it clear exactly how you are to be credited – we will reproduce these exactly, including punctuation and spacing.  We will also need a 3-4 sentence bio for the contributors.

Submission email: dani@autpress.com

Please put “Spoon Knife 2” and the genre (poetry, fiction, or memoir) in the subject to help us distinguish between anthology submissions and book proposals.  Thank you!

Like its predecessors, Spoon Knife 2: Test Chamber is a funded anthology.  Precise payment details will be available shortly.