NEW PUBLICATION GERMS OF TRUTH A book about life, death and families of all ages, stages, and orientation – and sperm banks . . .
In this engaging and thoughtful collection of short stories, we find people of all ages trying to make sense—poignant, often funny, sometimes wise—of the many, changing ways they intersect as parents, children, and families from conception to death. READ MORE
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS I-THOU IN AN UP-DOWN WORLD Lasting Friendships Across Deep Divides
Race . . . Religion . . . Gender . . . Age . . . Intelligence . . . Health . . . Ability. . . Class . . . Power
The psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan wrote, "When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one's own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists." What is the state of parity that needs to exist in genuine friendship? Friendship could be defined as putting another's existential reality on a par with our own, for we all, as Martin Buber observes, wish to be confirmed in our being by another and to have a presence in the being of the other. It is hard to imagine genuine friendship without this fundamental equality and interpenetration of values and experience. But it is also an uncomfortable social truth that differences, stigmatized, rapidly become disparities. Disparities, even when socially addressed, can remain powerful tacit divides. How then can friendships be developed and sustained across deep divides—of opportunity, ability, education, wealth, privilege, culture, belief, and experience? What allows us to stay in I-Thou relationships in an up-down world?
We are interested in stories, memoirs, poetry, and creative non-fiction from and about people who have successfully maintained long term friendships across deep divides. What inspires these friendships? What are their rewards? What are the special challenges they bring? How do they change our understanding of our own gifts, privileges, and limits? Our understanding of the defining power of larger social forces? Our understanding of the defining power of fundamental affection? How is our own existential reality enlarged by the commonalities we discover in these friendships—and the differences? Are these friendships more fragile or more resilient than ones with people who are more similar to us? What can be said inside these relationships that can't be said outside them? What goes unspoken? What is unspeakable?
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Deadline: July 15, 2013 We make final editorial submissions on all submitted manuscripts only after the submission deadline. Electronic submissions only, either Word or RTF. Prose ≤5,000 words. Poetry ≤5 poems. Payment in copies Submit manuscripts electronically: friendship@universaltable.org
We consider dual submissions and previously published work only if informed of this at time of submission. We do not pay reprint fees. It is the author's responsibility to get needed permissions.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS LOVE BEFORE: LOVE AFTER
The face of love changes over the years. Just look in the mirror: What relation does that face staring so intently back at you have to do with the one that you were born with? Just look across the table: What relationship do the feelings you have toward that accomplished, harassed mother feeding broccoli to a recalcitrant two-year old have with those you had toward the morose teenager you simultaneously adored and deplored two decades ago? What do the feelings you have toward that face creased with age, eyes magnified by reading glasses, which regards you so curiously over an open book have to do with those you felt for the man or woman you married? The face of love changes with time and circumstance—and so does its essence. It can become richer, more contentious, mysterious, fragile, elastic, contingent, raw, or habitual—none of which means it is any less true or less deserving of the name.
We invite submissions of poetry, fiction, memoir, and creative non-fiction for an anthology that explores what changes and what remains the same in our affection for each other as we go through life's great changes. What is love like before and after adolescence, adulthood, professional success or failure, illness, marriage, betrayal, divorce, parenthood, bereavement, large and small dislocations in place, culture, or belief?
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Deadline: August 15, 2013 We make final editorial submissions on all submitted manuscripts only after the submission deadline. Electronic submissions only, either Word or RTF. Prose ≤5,000 words. Poetry ≤5 poems. Payment in copies Submit manuscripts electronically: love@universaltable.org
We consider dual submissions and previously published work only if informed of this at time of submission. We do not pay reprint fees. It is the author's responsibility to get needed permissions.
July 1-31: Accepting Submissions October 15: Final Decisions
At each submission period, we hope to select 2-3 books to be published within the following year. This is not a contest. If no manuscripts are appropriate, none are selected.
We consider completed, individually authored manuscripts: novels, short story collections, memoirs, creative non-fiction, and full-length poetry collections. We don't consider edited collections or book proposals.
Books need to fall under one of the subject areas the press focuses on: Creative Acculturation; Pluralism in Families; Social and Psychological Resilience; Illness and Meaning; Creative Aging; Listening Across Faith Traditions.
We read all submissions with care because we value the time, effort, and aspirations of our writers. We ask that writers who submit show us the same consideration. Before submitting, please read the Call for Submissions carefully to make sure that the work you are submitting truly fits the theme in content matter and in tone, for we are more than a literary press, we are one with a clear social commitment to finding the We in Them, the Us in You. We want work that has emotional depth and complexity and that invites us, ultimately, into wiser relation with each other.
We suggest you browse through our list of subjects and then our library and read excerpts from some of our other anthologies, as well as our mission statement - A Welcoming Philosophy - on the home page and our reasons for founding the Wising Up Press. If you are interested in the Writers Collective, we provide extensive information about that as well.
DARING TO REPAIR:What Is It, Who Does It & Why?
In this intriguing anthology of poetry, memoir, and story, forty-five talented writers ages twenty to eighty explore repair in many forms: between adults and their parents, parents and their children, in romantic relationships, marriage, divorce, bereavement because of the death of a parent, spouse, or grandchild, and in relationship to broader social conditions as well, like poverty, addiction, racism, war, physical differences, disease. . . .LOOK INSIDE
Visit the WISING UP PRESS CHANNEL on YouTube.
ABOUT WISING UP PRESS
We decided to create a small press to expand and support our various Universal Table programs - and because we love the written word, especially when it is used passionately and authentically to explore themes of abiding importance to us as individuals and as a society. Many of our publications focus on literature by contemporary writers because of the power of narrative to help us identify safely with others who may at first seem, by appearance or circumstances or culture, very different from us. Stories make the world feel more manageable by increasing our ability to tolerate suffering, to experience empathy, to marry hope and pain in a way that honors the reality in each of them. Stories teach us, in the very listening, in the very act of identifying with the storyteller, or the characters, that the existence of other points of view is a richness not a danger. In our own lives, most of us find it difficult to tell stories that have good roles for all of us, that can see our differences, however profound, as mysterious, unpredictable, but ultimately gracious - an invitation into a blessing story larger than any one of us can write alone. We want our publications to serve as an invitation to stand in that richer relation - empathic, musing, open to new meaning - with ourselves and with our neighbors.
We see our books, especially our Wising Up Anthologies, as catalysts for community, a way of deepening the conversations that develop through the shared experience of reading, especially around areas of sticky, or strident, social concern. What can we discuss through the mysterious mediation of a book that we cannot do directly?
