qarrtsiluni

We’re pleased to announce a new issue and an intriguing new theme, Insecta. Here’s how the guest editors describe it:

We live in a kingdom of insects. Glancing from the infinitesimally small fairyfly to the giant stick insect, we find that this is a weird and various world. The catalogue of nocturnal moths, thrips, butterflies, caddisflies, angel insects, snow fleas, bristletails, mayflies, silverfish, and bugs is endless and the names evocative.

For this issue of qarrtsiluni, we are interested in art — poem, painting, story, nonfiction, photograph — inspired by insects. We are equally interested in writing about insects, being just as enamored by Thoreau’s ant battle in Walden as Frost’s butterflies, “Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above, / Like a limp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.”

We expect a wild variety of explorations on this subject, with work undergoing that mysterious metamorphosis of revision, to be finally shined up to a high beetle-like polish. In insects, the final step in transformations leads to the fully-formed imago — Latin plural, imagines.

There’s a 1500-word limit for prose this time, and a 50-line limit for poems. Please include no more than four poems or six images per submission, and wait two weeks after your first submission before sending a second. Submissions will be considered until December 15, for publication throughout November and December. For the rest of our submission guidelines, see the How to Contribute page.

The editors for this issue are two of the hardest working writers we know. Ivy Alvarez (website, blog) is an Australian poet currently living in Cardiff, Wales. She’s the author of Mortal (Red Morning Press, 2006), and recently received grants from the Australia Council for the Arts and Academi to write poems for her second manuscript. In addition to poetry, she also writes plays, reviews and articles. Her co-editor, Marly Youmans (website, blog) is the author of seven books: four novels or novellas, two fantasies set in the Southern Appalachians, and a collection of poems, Claire (Louisiana State University Press, 2003). A native of the Carolinas, she lives in Cooperstown, New York.

• In other news, we’ve added an expanded copyright statement to the submission guidelines, asserting the acquisition of one-time and non-exclusive anthology rights. In addition, we attempted to clarify our position on previously blogged material:

In general, submissions of writing should not have been previously blogged or published elsewhere, though we do make exceptions for pieces that appeared in the author’s own blog, if the appearance was temporary or of an earlier draft.

While we do want qarrtsiluni to be a repository of original writing, we also want to encourage the growth of a literary blogging culture, so writers shouldn’t feel that they can’t submit something simply because an earlier version of it appeared on their blog.

We welcome feedback on these changes, and any other critiques or suggestions you might have.

–Beth Adams and Dave Bonta

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