Events

Deadline: September 1st, 2020 Payment: $20 Theme: We ask our fiction writers to imagine their readers navigating a story with one finger poised over a mouse button. Can your story stay that finger to the end? “Turning words into art is unnatural. It begins with a contrary attitude. It says, I am unhappy with the way things are and desire to make things different. Rather than represent the world, I will make something wildly and savagely new. I will defy logic. I will invest in new perceptions. I will combine and recombine and fabricate and juggle until something that I have never experienced is experienced. The process is alchemical. The process is violent. It goes to the heart of creativity. It disrupts and shatters. It is splendid with provocation. It is an aggression against banality. It is sharp and loud like a janitor scraping frost from a window. The hectic bounce of steam on a street after a truck roars by. The anarchy of waters, the comedy of the face, dangerous feelings vented from a cage of skin.” ~ John Olson Poetry — We believe poetry is contrary by nature, always defying, always tonguing the tang of novelty. We look especially for plurality of meaning, for dual reverberation of beauty and concern. Contrary’s poetry in particular often mimics the effects of fiction or commentary. We find ourselves enamored of prose poems because they are naturally contrary toward form – they tug on the forces of exposition or narrative – but prose poems remain the minority of all the poetic forms we publish. Please consider that Contrary receives vast amounts of poetry and that we can publish only a small percentage of that work. Please submit no more than three poems per issue. Our poetry editor is Shaindel Beers. Fiction — We ask our fiction writers to imagine...

Deadline: September 1st, 2020 Payment: $30 with potentially more depending on Kickstarter and a contributors copy Theme: A feminist bicycle science fiction anthologies focusing on witchcraft We are accepting submissions now for the witchcraft-themed ninth volume of the Bikes in Space series of feminist bicycle science fiction anthologies, scheduled to come out at the beginning of 2022. Working title: Bicycles & Broomsticks Please submit your original short fiction that combines themes of witchcraft and bicycling, through a feminist lens. Both witchiness and bicycles must be inherent to accepted stories—ie, if you swapped these elements out for detectives and toasters, the stories would not work. The witchcraft can be informed by actual Paganism or another tradition, or be more along the lines of Kiki’s Delivery Service or Sabrina the Teenage Witch, or something entirely new. Creative, subversive, feminist magic is key. Stories should have a feminist perspective, even if feminism and identity are not overt topics. We especially welcome submissions from queer, trans, disabled, and BIPOC authors and welcome stories that portray more diverse perspectives than are found in mainstream sff. All fantastical genres welcome: science fiction, fantasy, mythology, speculative fiction, climate punk, slipstream, supernatural horror, fractured fairy tales, or anything in between or beyond. No fanfic, poetry, or erotica for this series. Black and white comics and illustrations are also welcome. If you’re not sure what works, you may find it helpful to familiarize yourself with other books in the series. Word count: a 1,000 – 6,000 word range is typical, but make your story the length it needs to be, and if it’s right for the anthology, we’ll work it out in editorial. Format: Google doc or Word preferred; PDF or text documents are also fine. If submitting an illustration, please get in touch about format and dimensions before you start working on it. Payment: A portion of profits...