Now open for submissions from June 19 - July 18.
Para Vadhahong is one of our four editors-in-chief for our 2024 Community Anthologies. You can read more about the program here, about the 2024 cohort here, and how this program originally came to be here. Below is the call for submission for Para’s anthology, On Prayer, as well as what Para is looking for in submissions.
“To whom do you pray for nourishment and justice in the face of oppression? What kind of faith do you carve out for yourself? What private, public, communal, mythical, or cultural rituals do you draw your own sense of devotion from? A prayer can be a litany of desires; a call to action; an upholding of the self and the beloved; a life-giving elegy.
A prayer can transcend organized structures of religion, connecting the devotee to recipients of their devotion regardless of time and distance. In the midst of genocide in Gaza, I am moved to consider the role of prayer as a force of protest and healing. Prayers are a testament to endurance: the devotee’s test of mettle in the wake of grief and loss.
This open-call anthology invites any creative expression—poems, narratives, music, photographs, songs, and art—about ancestors and spirits, gods and ghosts, beloveds and other entities. What scripture, if any, do you derive value or deviate from? Are there prayers in your writing and art-making practice? I invite you to send irreverent work that pushes boundaries of prayer, that reclaims godhood for yourselves in the search for day-to-day meaning.
To submit, please visit our Submittable page here. BIPOC artists are encouraged to submit, though this call is open to all writers and artists.
Para Vadhahong is a Thai diaspora poet and artist. Their writing can be spotted in Salt Hill Journal, The Hyacinth Review, Lover’s Eye Press, Ice Lolly Review, fifth wheel press, DVAN, Sine Theta, Honey Literary, and others. They are the winner of Salt Hill Journal’s Arthur Flowers Flash Fiction Prize (2022), the Lex Allen Literary Festival’s Fiction Prize (2023), Hollins University’s Nancy Thorp Poetry Prize (2023), and Palette Poetry’s Sappho Prize for Women Poets (2023). They are a CNF reader for Atlas and Alice and a past editor for Gravel and Cargoes at Hollins University.
