Call for submissions: The New Lesbian Pulp anthology
SEEKING SHORT STORIES, SCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS for The New Lesbian Pulp anthology forthcoming from Feminist Press. We the editors, Sarah Fonseca and Octavia Saenz, are keenly interested in works from working class and “fringe” backgrounds — we’d say “marginalized,” but our communities get enough lip service deploying that adjective already. So let’s own it. We are committed to publishing authors who are trans, Black, or have worked in the sex trades.
What is The New Lesbian Pulp?
NEW: The landscape of relationships, queer embodiment, and womanhood has shifted past our cultural focus. We the editors want stories that pull the lens back to where we are now: what is the reality of the contemporary dyke? Online, masked, experiencing housing precarity, subject to reactionary legislation on our bodies and the constant threat of gun violence, all of which affect how we relate to one another in and out of bed; let alone come to grips with ourselves. At the same time, the wasteland of oppression we live in today is a byproduct of a past filled with institutional and intra-community violence; “new” does not always mean current, and novel perspectives on the past and its interweaving into our present are welcome, too.
LESBIAN: A word which evokes the libidinous image of a woman devouring her mirror counterpart, yet which in discourse has been reduced to the chaste, the exclusive, the subtextual — replaced with euphemisms like “sapphic” and split into lobotomized categories for consumption. Apt, given the history of lesbians subjected to lobotomy in the midcentury medical establishment of pulp’s original milieu. We the editors know the word “lesbian” avidly serves as a lightning rod for gender variance, relationship unorthodoxy, and carnal taboo. We want — no, desire, crave, yearn for — tales that expand the definition and engage with the boundaries of what is acceptable for a lesbian.
Its heyday dovetailing with McCarthyism, lesbian pulp fiction thrived as a subversive cultural artform that afforded countless women discreet pleasure during a suppressive American milieu. Pulp’s most esteemed publishers walked a fine line, adhering to postal censorship guidelines — very few of the discipline’s protagonists were permitted the luxuries of transcending mental illness, curbing suicidal ideations, or foregoing death entirely. Otherwise, pulp afforded its authors their full-throated First Amendment right to write gay girls — masculine and feminine and rebuking dichotomy; libidinous, lonely, angry, and otherwise-inclined — in motion against the romanticized backdrop of the gritty, postwar metropolis. The result was a populist, straightforward genre tradition that, to put it rather simply, kept queer women alive. As scholar Christopher Nealon writes of author and genre foremother Ann Bannon, lesbian pulp gets “at the source of specialness, the sources of her claim to be treated with dignity.”
Lesbianism is self-sustenance.
PULP: A commitment to melodrama, heightened sensation, and ratcheted tension. Where the ordinary protagonist might leave a voice message, the pulp protagonist arrives, frantic and unannounced, at the door. Where the literary heroine might confess to her counterpart what imperils their union, a pulp heroine trashes the apartment they share. Where the mundane love interest may fade into obscurity, the pulp love interest dies tragically. The editors seek stories that don’t pull punches nor fade to black; we want the full, bruised and bloody affair. We also acknowledge that lives led hand-to-mouth often come with romantic collateral damage. Survival begets more chaos. We hope to see works that confess to that reckless immediacy. Ultimately, pulp is trauma writing.
WHAT WE WANT FROM YOU: Written works of short fiction between 3,000 - 10,000 words (5,000 is our sweet spot); 1-3 artworks suitable for publication in black and white (pen and ink drawings that channel last century’s bookplates and children’s book illustrations are strongly desired); an enthusiasm for being edited that pays homage to healing through fascinating work, the history thereof, maintaining consistent supportive rapport, and underground dyke community building. Just because the characters behave badly does not mean that writers and editors must do the same.
Send your 12-pt. Times New Roman double-spaced .doc or .docx submissions to thenewlesbianpulp@gmail.com today! Any file format works for art, though high-res scans or direct outputs are preferred. Our submissions window closes June 1, 2023.
Honorariums are contingent upon volume of work accepted, but will range between $300 and $1,000 per contributor.
THE EDITORS
Sarah Fonseca
Sarah Fonseca is a self-taught writer from the Georgia foothills living in Brooklyn, New York. Known for thoughtful, historically-informed, and — at times — reactionary responses that are always artful. Fonseca has held writing fellowships with Film at Lincoln Center, Lambda Literary Foundation, and People for the American Way. In addition to publications in Museum of the Moving Image’s Reverse Shot, Kenyon Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, her work has been recognized for its literary merit by Black Warrior Review, Sundress Publications' Best of the Net, The Association of LGBTQ Journalists. Read Fonseca's writing online at sarahfonseca.com.
Octavia Saenz
Octavia Saenz is an author-illustrator from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she went to theatre school and worked at a design agency for three years. She completed her undergraduate degrees in Creative Writing and Illustration at Ringling College of Art + Design. Her literary fiction focuses on LGBTQIA+ life, memory, and being Puerto Rican. She also writes speculative fiction and horror, where her themes range from dreams and nature to consciousness and guilt. Her short story about a transgender woman re-doing a date, “Overnight,” won the Gold Juror’s Prize in Creative Writing for Best of Ringling, as selected by Todd Pierce. She also received the Trustee Scholarship at Ringling.