Call for Submissions: Women with Weapons
WOMEN WITH WEAPONS
This is an open call for short fiction submissions for a planned anthology. Here are the guidelines:
Your story should be 1000-8000 words long, previously unpublished.
YOUR STORY SHOULD PROMINENTLY FEATURE A WOMAN WIELDING A WEAPON.
*Or many weapons. Or many women, wielding many weapons.
**Trans women are women.
***Non-binary weapon wielders are also welcome.
Your story must FAIL the REVERSE BECHDEL TEST. [What does this mean? See below.]
Your story may be in any genre. It may be set in the past, present, or future.
You can include sex. You can include violence. But we are not so keen on sexual violence--this should not just be a collection of stories about women avenging r*pe.
This call is open to writers of all genders residing anywhere in the world. However, we are an Indian company, and will give preference to stories that will work for our primarily Indian audience. Nevertheless, don't be shy to send in your Congolese swordswomen, medieval Vietnamese vampire slayers, or Belizean Mennonite harpoonists.
We will pay a flat INR 3000 for each accepted original English story PLUS INR 3 per word. (About USD $31.50 + $0.03 per word). So, we'd pay INR 6000 for a 1000 word story and INR 27,000 for a 8000 word story.* There will be bonuses if our Kickstarter does well (scheduled for next Spring).
We ask for world English print and electronic rights, exclusive for 2 years, after which you may publish elsewhere. We'll also want foreign language anthology rights in case someone wants to translate our book into Latvian or something.
Graphic narratives of 3-16 pages will be considered--black and white only--but will make up at most 20% of the final book. Payment for graphic narratives will be Rs. 900 per page.
WE ARE VERY INTERESTED IN TRANSLATIONS, either new translations of older stories or fresh work. We understand that translations can be costly and rights may be difficult to procure. Please get in touch if you want to propose a story that meets the guidelines, even if the translation is not complete or you cannot translate yourself. Economics will be discussed on a case-by-base basis.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO FAIL THE REVERSE BECHDEL TEST?
The Bechdel test requires that a story features
a) at least two women
b) who talk to each other
c) about something other than a man.
The reverse Bechdel test is the same thing but with the genders swapped.
To FAIL the reverse Bechdel test, then, your story must feature
a) at most one man
b) or, if it does feature more than one man, the men must not talk to each other
c) or, if the men do talk to each other, they must ONLY talk about the women; they are not allowed to discuss anything else.
(Exceptions may be considered if your story is extra genderspicy and you find all this binary logic constraining.)
Deadline: September 15
Send in submissions to blaft@blaft.com with subject line
WWW SUBMSSION
(Important: Exactly this!)
No AI please.
We look forward to reading your work!