F – Call for Submissions to Crab Creek Review. Theme: Embodied Lives

The reading period is open from September 15 through November 15, or when our 300 Submittable Cap is hit.  The editors seek original, unpublished poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction via Submittable. Submissions are free, and payment is in contributor copies. We look forward to reading your work, and encourage early submissions.

General Submission Guidelines:

• Only original, previously unpublished work will be considered. This includes personal websites and social media.
• For poetry, send up to four poems. For fiction, send stories of up to 3,000 words. For creative nonfiction, send essays of up to 1,500 words.
• Title your document with your name and the genre. (i.e.: GwendolynBrooks_Poetry; Adrienne Rich_Nonfiction.)
• Include a cover letter in the provided space in the Submittable form (not in the document). Include your mailing address, email and phone number, a 50-word bio, social handles, and the titles of the pieces you are submitting.
• Should you submit something that is under simultaneous consideration, please indicate this in your cover letter and notify us immediately by adding a note to your Submittable account if the piece is accepted elsewhere.
• Send your work as a SINGLE attachment (.doc; .docx; .rtf; PDF); docx preferred.
• Please submit no more than one batch of poems or one prose piece per reading period.
• We aim for a response time of 8 weeks, but please do not query your submission status unless 4 months have passed.
• If you need to update us on the status of your simultaneous submission, please do so by adding a note to your submission, in Submittable.​

Poetry:
Send up to four poems, no more than eight pages total. We welcome your best work, and have no restrictions on form or content, except that we will not consider work that is defamatory, discriminatory, or that promotes hatred. 12pt standard font. One batch of submissions per reading period. Revisions may be made upon acceptance; please do not withdraw and resubmit your work due to revisions concerns.

Creative Nonfiction
Send one piece up to 1,500 words per submission period. We’re looking for well-crafted essays that exhibit depth and nuance, a clear voice, personal reflection, and vivid scenes. Experimental, lyric, and non-traditional forms are encouraged. We do not publish literary criticism, scholarly articles, or reportage. Revisions may be made upon acceptance; do not withdraw and resubmit your work due to revision concerns.
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Themed Fiction—Embodied Lives
“Literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear, and, save for one or two passions such as desire and greed, is null, and negligible and non-existent.” (Virginia Woolf, “On Being Ill”)

“All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life—where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.” (Miranda July, It Chooses You)

As both Woolf and July suggest, literature has long dismissed the body as little more than the vehicle for thought—a landscape the creative and critical self must cross (or maybe endure) in order to do the real work and to live the most meaningful life: a life of the mind. This relationship is a false binary, though, and progressively we understand (socially, politically, scientifically, and even artistically) that mind and body are intricately in connection.

For this fiction call, we’re looking for stories of up to 3,000 words that explore embodiment in all its complexity. How does the body—in its desire and strengths, its fragilities and limits, its autonomy and its subjugation to the larger systems of power that dominate our lives—shape who we are, how we see ourselves and others, and how we exist in relationship? How are mind and body in opposition to one another, and how are they one? And what does it mean to be embodied when our bodies are—by choice or by force—rendered separate from our minds and wills and wants, not fully our own?

We look forward to reading your authentic, narratively engaging, and well-crafted fiction on embodied life.