Our 2026 Community Anthologies are now open for submissions

What needs to be repressed, sublimated, or transcended in order for friendship to exist, endure, or perhaps even recover? What intimate stories about friendship will make us hold our breath or shout with recognition?

Give us your best work on experiencing friendship. What joys exist in a so-called unlikely friendship? Where is the border between friendship and romantic love? Can friendship form instantaneously? Is sacrifice critical to a friendship, and what happens if friends don’t give the concept of sacrifice the same weight? How might we resist the temptation to retreat into selfishness and isolation? How has friendship sustained or perhaps even saved you? How do time, place, and distance interact with friendship? Is antagonism inevitable with some friends, and what might that dynamic generate? How do you know when it’s time to call it quits? What has the loss of a friend meant to you? What grief have you experienced because of a friend?

We’re drawn to intimate narration. We cheer for writing that celebrates friendship while also taking on the shadowy, uncomfortable aspects of it to articulate feelings we may not want to face. We revel in subtext and omissions that may say more than the words actually being said.  

“On Friendship” will discover what insight, humor, heartbreak, and maybe even hard-earned wisdom about friendship you have to share. We want you to really dig in! Simultaneous submissions also welcome, but please withdraw immediately if your piece is accepted elsewhere. 

This anthology is an open call for prose. Fiction or nonfiction. We love all prose forms, from the traditional to the genre-bending, but we’re looking within a range for length: 1,250-3,000 words. Please put your word count at the end or in the header of your piece. Submissions exceeding 3,000 words will not be considered.

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This anthology is curated by Jules Chung. You can read more about Jules and our other 2026 EICs, here. To submit to this anthology, please visit our Submittable page here. You can also find more information about our Submission Guidelines here. 

This anthology invites your narratives of childhood crushes, first heady kisses, a litany of dates that go nowhere, queer yearning, random hookups, open marriages, heartbreak, abandonment and betrayal, using a sex toy for the first time, long-term love, polycules and the relationship anarchy smorgasbord, shibari nights with a novice partner, the lightbulb moment that made your protagonist realize they were asexual, an alpine divorce, your AI boyfriend — the possibilities are endless. 

Your narrative should ideally connect the impact of gendered and social expectations to why we want what we want. I’m particularly interested in how technology has transformed romance: from the mid‑20th century to the modern dating app era, tracing a path from smoky bars and clandestine rooms to swipe culture, algorithmic matchmaking, ghosting, and the promise of a future of utopic companionship in this era of artificial intelligence. I’m looking for spicy. I’m looking for messy. I will center embodied experiences, experiences on the margins that move away from the heteronormative and heterosexual relationship escalator, experiences of queer and marginalized folx. I’m looking for the inconformable, the bizarre, the rare, the tender.

All prose submissions should be about 1,500 – 4,000 words. Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but please withdraw your piece immediately if it’s accepted elsewhere. Finally, if you utilize AI tools in the ideation, writing, and/or revision of your piece, please disclose in your statement of interest.

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This anthology is curated by Ayotola Tehingbola. You can read more about Ayotola and our other 2026 EICs, here. To submit to this anthology, please visit our Submittable page here. You can also find more information about our Submission Guidelines here. 

When objects, people, languages, cultures, and memories disappear, where do they go and what do they leave behind? Is the act of disappearing a choice or is it imposed? Can a disappearance be reversed? Can the disappeared be found again? Can a disappearance be celebrated? How can disappearances call attention to themselves on the page?

This anthology invites you to bring your interpretation of disappearance. We are interested in disappearance as a verb, disappearing as an act, the disappeared as a state between the living and the dead. We are thinking about enforced disappearances all over the world and across history: the forceful disappearance of immigrants in the US, political disappearances in Kashmir, in Syria, in Sri Lanka, in El Salvador, and the disappearance of histories, languages, memories, cultures, and land, especially in the context of the ongoing genocide in Palestine. We also want to focus on the potential joys and celebrations of disappearances, what have you let go with victory and with love? We are curious to witness what the word “disappearance” means to different communities: the disappearance of identities, ritualistic removals of what’s unwanted, disappearing into roles created by social expectations and contracts, cyclical and natural disappearances that come with an expectation of reappearance, and meanings lost and reshaped in translation and migration. 

For this anthology, we are looking for works that are open to exploring the in-between and absences. We are open to poetry and prose, as well as hybrid and visual mediums. Staying true to the topic, we are also interested in writing that employs the idea of disappearance as a formal and stylistic choice, bilingual and translated works, and experimental pieces. Prose submissions should be under 5,000 words, and you can submit up to three poems.

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This anthology is curated by Mishma Nixon. You can read more about Mishma and our other 2026 EICs, here. To submit to this anthology, please visit our Submittable page here. You can also find more information about our Submission Guidelines here. 

Welcome to the dumpster fire era.

We live in a world that we often describe as trash, in both literal and figurative ways. We encounter a deluge of AI slop, we waste hours doomscrolling, we consume junk onscreen and on our plates. Our world is buckling under the weight of massive landfills, the debris and human cost of war and genocide, the excesses of data center waste, and the rotting ideologies of leaders who treat humans as disposable. 

At the same time, trash can also be liberating. Being trashy, in certain instances, means going against repressive gender, class, and capitalist norms. We embrace trashy novels, films, looks, and music as sources of pleasure and individuality. We trash-talk to boldly say what others are too afraid to admit. We dream of burning everything to the ground, hoping the ashes can finally clear the land for something new.

This anthology invites you to explore the many tensions, contradictions, and possibilities of trash. What are we willing to discard, and in the name of what cause? How do we discern filth from what is proper, without falling into the traps of purity and sterility? How do we resist being swallowed whole by the muck? What can we create with the rubbish we have; what can we salvage from a wreckage? And how do we reclaim trash as fertile soil instead of decay?

We’re looking for the strange, the weird, the unexpected, and even the humorous, something that expands or shifts our understanding of trash. This call is open to fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translation. Up to 3,500 words for prose and up to three poems for consideration.

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This anthology is curated by Ines Bellina. You can read more about Ines, as well as our other 2026 EICs, here. To submit to this anthology, please visit our Submittable page here. You can also find more information about our Submission Guidelines here.