It is an emergent phenomena, real as life, breath, consciousness—and, like them, can't be explained or predicted by its component parts. It's that something more that heals and reveals possibilities we could not see before. It can hold opposites, reconcile what seems completely incompatible. It can change what follows in ways we never imagined. When and where have we experienced a sense of wholeness? How did we recognize it? How did it shift our ways of being in ourselves, with each other, with what lies beyond? Can it be described? Shared? Does it require a sense of wonder—or create it?
We invite submissions of poetry, fiction, memoir and creative non-fiction on this theme.
DEADLINE: APRIL 15, 2023
wholeness@universaltable.org
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR ALL WISING UP ANTHOLOGIES Print and Web
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
We consider dual submissions and previously published work only if informed of this at time of submission. Previously published work must be accompanied with a list of where and when it has been previously published, including on the internet. We do not pay reprint fees. It is the author's responsibility to get needed permissions.
A GENTLE REMINDER FOR WRITERS
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 our Calls 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.
The broad range of characters in William Cass's moving and accessible second short story collection, Uncommon & Other Stories, all share a fascination with right action—how we know it, when we know it, and what that knowledge asks of us—in real time or in retrospect. Cass's stories are deeply rooted in the particularities of daily life and of nature—whether how to run a small inn in Arizona, harvest hay in Montana, mend an old woman's decaying picket fence, feed oneself through a stomach tube . . .
The historical novel Rowing Home explores how a talented, assimilated Jewish family living in Berlin in 1933 during the early rise of Nazism came to the decision to escape. What finally convinced them that it was time to leave? What confluence of events allowed them to do so?
THE POWER OF THE PAUSE The Wonder of Our Here & Now A Wising Up Anthology Heather Tosteson and Charles D. Brockett, Editors
Sometimes it is better not to over-ride, overcome, forge on. Sometimes the best step is just to stop—to pause, listen in, not just to doubts but perhaps to something more resilient, constructive, slower, but stronger. Wiser. The fifty-two talented writers in this collection help us explore, through poetry, fiction, and essay, the hidden gifts of pause, voluntary and involuntary, how it may help us recalibrate, restore, find new and richer ways of being with ourselves and others.
MY BROTHER SPEAKS IN DREAMS Of Family, Beauty & Belonging Catherine Anderson
With a sister’s candid view, Anderson chronicles the barriers that made life difficult for her brother Charlie and for others like him. In an era that only gradually came to accept people with intellectual disabilities, Charlie’s life and journey, including the eight years he spent in institutions, were challenging for him and his family.
A MOTHER SPEAKS, A DAUGHTER LISTENS Journeying Together Through Dementia Felicia Mitchell
While each life story is unique, dementia's ripple effect on relationships touches us in common ways. In this collection, we're invited to share one mother-daughter dementia journey from the early days of a woman's life through years in a nursing home and also the emotional transformations that continue after a loved one’s death.
A LITTLE BOOK OF LIVING THROUGH THE DAY: Poems During a Pandemic
David Breeden
David Breeden's moving and accessible collection of poetry, A Little Book of Living Through the Day: Poems During a Pandemic, was written to get himself through the isolation of the pandemic—and to reach others, like those in his congregation, struggling with the same burden of the day-after-day.
ADULT CHILDREN: Being One, Having One & What Goes In-Between A Wising Up Anthology
In this Wising Up Anthology, fifty writers explore—with zest, angst, humor, humility, anger, and love—through stories, poems, memoirs and creative non-fiction, our constantly changing and, hopefully, maturing relationships with those we raised and those who raised us.
These five highly topical plays by Toni Press-Coffman remain relevant to current social divides. Written over the last forty years, they movingly explore the nature of idealism, its distinctively American forms—where it comes from, how it is tested, how we lose or temper it, what saving graces come to take its place.
Both intimate and generalizable, the poems in Source Notes: Seventh Decade revolve around two core questions: "If everything we said to define ourselves/ was preceded by Just like everyone or/ Like most of us, what would shift/ in the life-long construction project/ we call our self?" and "Who says age can't be luxurious,/ astonishing, sui generis?" The poems move from public events to personal ones, explore creativity, age, marriage, early trauma, motherhood, family relationships, and travel, teaching us "we are never too old for rebirth, the hold of the miraculous."
SHARING THE BURDEN OF REPAIR: REENTRY AFTER MASS INCARCERATION A Wising Up Listening Project
Heather Tosteson & Charles D. Brockett
This book describes a six-year listening project on reentry that took place at the crest of an unusual wave of bipartisan criminal justice reform in Georgia, one of our most punishing states. Its primary intended audience is common citizens, like us, concerned about the reality of mass incarceration but unsure how to engage. . .
PRESIDENT BIDEN AND PROSPECTS FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM
Charles D. Brockett, PhD
This ebook meant for the common citizen portrays trends in public opinion about immigration in 21 easily read graphs. These trends are also related to their broader context: Will President Biden succeed where his last three predecessors failed? Certainly it will be a big challenge, but it can be done if we let the public show the way.
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.
