Deadline: January 31st, 2023
Payment: 5 cents per word for original fiction, 4 cents per word for reprints
Theme: The rewritten lives of female literary legends
Note: Reprints Welcome

The rewritten lives of literary legends

You suffer. You die. You exist so the hero can have his journey. Who are you?

You’re a woman in classic literature.

Of course this isn’t the destiny of every woman, but from Anna Karenina to Jocasta to Cio-Cio-San, from Esmeralda to Aida to Mrs Rochester, death, madness, or suffering is the fate of far too many women in classic stories. Anna Karenina Isn’t Dead undoes that.

In this anthology of literary women, these women live. Do they have a happily ever after? Maybe. Do they have a happy-right-now? Oh yes. Feel free to bring your woman to the present, future, to anywhere or anywhen. How your classic heroine finds her peace is up to you.

Tell us a reimagined tale of the famous, the infamous, the barely mentioned woman in an old story, poem, or legend. Give her a better journey than the one she got.

This call is open to writers of any gender and in any location; we accept simultaneous and multiple submissions (up to 3 stories per writer); payment is five cents American per word (four cents for reprints) up to 5,000 words – your story can be longer, but payment stops at 5K words. The deadline is 31 January 2023.

Please send your manuscript as a .docx attachment, Times New Roman, 12-point – with your name and story title on the first page. In your email be sure to tell us who your character is, and from what story she comes. No characters still under copyright please.

Submissions or questions to Atlin Merrick (she/her): [email protected].

Via: Improbable Press.