We're giving the editorial keys to curators.
In an era when we’re seeing literary magazines closing their doors, TSW is dedicated to building more platforms for our communities’ voices.
The Seventh Wave is thrilled to launch Community Anthologies, which allows us to double the number of people we publish per year. Think: special issues, folios, digital zines, mini series. Each year, we give the editorial keys to four curators — writers, artists, or editors — to create their own digital issue, showcasing the work of seven artists/writers in each, publishing a total of 28 additional voices per year. These Editors-in-Chief work in a cohort together, supporting each other as they curate their own call/topic, work with their seven contributors, and publish their anthology. We call them “community anthologies,” because that’s what they are: an anthology of community, conversation, and voice. The first four community anthologies will be publishing on January 16, 2024. Curious to get to know our 2023 Editors-in-Chief and the topics they curated? See below.
We are thrilled to announce and welcome — left to right — Bianca Ng, Patrycja Humienik, Sarah Madges, and Briana Gwin as our first cohort of Editors-in-Chief for our Community Anthologies. We have had the distinct privilege of working in various capacities with each, and so it brings us great joy to provide these four deeply-talented creators the keys to curate their own community anthology. Get to know more about our EICs over on our Well-Crafted column.
Curated by Bianca Ng, “On Tending” is open to queer BIPOC artists. It is open for submissions via TSW’s Submittable page.
Description: What are you shedding these days in order to become more yourself? Caring for yourself is much like nurturing plants — it requires attunement and patience. And in order to grow, you need to tend to your decay. How much old growth are you carrying that hasn’t been tended to, impeding you from sprouting? When we stop changing, we stop growing. But this process can be lonely. If no one sees your change, how can you continue to honor your growth? A form of healing is choosing to care for your needs and no longer being able to disassociate from your body. It is integrating different versions of yourself, younger and adult, and allowing them to take up space. The process of healing means you’re no longer fearful of your decay. As we tend to our gardens, we listen to our intuition and cultivate the environment we thrive in. What are you letting go of? How do you honor your decay? I invite folks who exist in the in-between space of creating. Someone who experiments with a combination of mixed creative expressions (words, visuals, photos, materials, motion, audio) to communicate their stories.
Submission Requirements: This call was only open to queer BIPOC folks. It is now closed.
Curated by Patrycja Humienik, “On Rivers” is an invite-only anthology.
Description: A river is a contested site. I return again and again to rivers, real and imagined. In “The First Water Is the Body,” Postcolonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz writes, “Do you think the water will forget what we have done, what we continue to do?” The climate crisis is intensifying ongoing conflicts over water worldwide; as I write this, the Colorado River — about which Diaz writes — a crucial water source for the Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi, and Navajo peoples and seven states along its basin, is drought-stricken, with record-low current levels. Rivers have much to tell us about our bodies and the land. I bring the river questions; I want to know yours. I am curating an anthology engaging with rivers you know, rivers you love, rivers you’ve lost or imagined.
Submission Requirements: this anthology was not open to the public for submissions.
Curated by Sarah Madges, “On Work” is has four spots open to the public for submissions via TSW’s Submittable page. The other three seats are reserved to individuals Sarah has specifically invited to be a part of this issue.
Description: In the wake of the so-called “Great Resignation,” quiet quitting, and unprecedented strikes, the media has fomented a moral panic — “no one wants to work anymore” — when, more accurately, no one wants to work under these conditions anymore. Our work regime has been tailored to maintain the power of finance capital, dividing society between the actually productive but relentlessly exploited, the devastatingly unemployed, and, in the largest group: people paid to do nothing, in positions designed to engender identification with the ruling class. The COVID-19 pandemic and related economic trends have sharpened existing labor inequalities into focus, causing many of us to question what we are willing to do in return for a paycheck. This issue is calling all kinds of writers and workers — especially those who live and labor on the margins — to show what has come from this questioning, or to start questioning! I want you to reflect on your relationship to work, critique corporate “culture,” talk about unions, bemoan the churn of “passion fields” and “mission-driven” careers, discuss “employability” in terms of gender presentation, class, race, neurodivergence, etc. Write an essay about your bullshit job*, or your shit job**, or work you actually love! Send in a poem about a literal dream job, a sci-fi vision of work in the future, or complicate what constitutes labor and production itself. Show me what work (or your conception of it) is like today, over three years into the pandemic. And get compensated for it!
*To paraphrase anarchist anthropologist David Graeber, a bullshit job is a form of paid employment so unnecessary or pernicious that even the worker can’t justify its existence, and yet they feel obligated to pretend that isn’t the case.
**Conversely, a shit job is a form of paid employment that is either necessary or of some benefit to society but the worker is treated like shit or must work under shitty conditions.
Submission Requirements: This call was open to all writers. It is now closed.
Curated by Briana Gwin, “On Permanence” is open to the public for submissions via TSW’s Submittable page.
Description: Maybe you are like me, and you’ve been thinking a lot about permanence. How the things you grew up taking for granted, or believing in their everlastingness, have vanished—or changed irreparably, unrecognizably. Maybe for you, this sense of permanence is inextricably connected to the memory of a once-nuclear family, a long-held dream, a deeply-rooted belief, or an irrefutable understanding of your rights as a citizen of this more-than-human world. Maybe “permanence” is tied to a person or object that promised to be a constant in your life even as you grew and changed. Maybe permanence echoes within the rigid constraints of a now ill-fitting label, or in something a birth certificate or diagnosis proclaimed your body, a living vessel, could or could not be (or do) as long as you lived. Or maybe your sense of permanence is tied to your understanding of the power, importance, and (im)probability of permanence itself. What happened when this notion made contact with reality for you? Did time and other factors strip away its weight? Or did you discover something else entirely—which is to say, were you brought to believe that some things truly are infinite and indefinite, can never be changed or revoked, that even what you can’t take with you from this world will remain a legacy, an energy, an uncorruptible force carried forward? If you, too, have been thinking about permanence, tell (or show) me about yourself: words or art that is permanently, impermanently, chronically, terminally, always, no longer, forever, you.
Submission Requirements: this call was open to all writers/artists across all genres. It is now closed.
We Keep Beginning:
An Anthology on Process
In this anthology, you’ll find musings about the use of line breaks and white space in poetry, as well as thoughts on rough drafts, nostalgia, and motivation (or a lack thereof). You’ll read about heartache, legacy, and representation, and why it matters who our contributors are creating for. What unites them all is an indelible dedication to their craft, and to understanding the impact and the role of their words in the context of the worlds around them.
Our next print anthology will likely be in 2025. Sign up for our mailing list and stay tuned for further information.
Caring for yourself is much like nurturing plants — it requires attunement and patience. And in order to grow, you need to tend to your decay. How much old growth are you carrying that hasn’t been tended to, preventing you from sprouting?
Rivers have something to tell us about our bodies and the land. I bring the river questions. I want to know yours.
I want you to reflect on your relationship to work, critique corporate “culture,” talk about unions, bemoan the churn of “passion fields” and “mission-driven” careers, discuss “employability” in terms of gender presentation, class, race, neurodivergence, etc.
Maybe "permanence" is tied to a person or object that promised to provide a constant in your life even as you grew and changed. Maybe permanence echoes within the rigid constraints of a now ill-fitting label, or in something a birth certificate or diagnosis proclaimed your body, a living vessel, could or could not be and do as long as you lived.