Events

Deadline: October 13th, 2024 Payment: 8 cents/6 pence per word Theme: Dark stories featuring monstrous manifestations of trauma and guilt, paranoia and persecution, anxiety, addiction, and crippling terror In the tradition of Poe’s ‘A Tell-tale Heart’ and Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, This Way Lies Madness (publishing September 2025) will bring together a twisted tangle of dark stories featuring monstrous manifestations of trauma and guilt, paranoia and persecution, anxiety, addiction, and crippling terror. In these pages, readers should expect to find madness in all its forms, without the tired stigmatising tropes. Instead, these tales of deep-rooted terror will draw on metaphor, symbolism, imagery, structural innovation, and close introspection to challenge stigma and promote understanding around mental illness, reflecting broader cultural, generational, and societal impacts with authenticity and insight. Think of horrific scenarios as metaphors for mental illness: trauma is the creature that drags its prey into its deep, dark lair; the hopelessness of depression is the person lost in a labyrinthine underworld, suicidal ideation is a person living in the belly of a great beast, addiction is the two-sided mirror, or the persecuted werewolf is the representation of a person’s struggle against the duality of bi-polar disorder. Writers are asked to be bold and inventive, to challenge convention, while being sensitive to the stigmatising constructs of mental illness in current society. Up to 10 stories will be selected from this submissions route, and we welcome fresh interpretations and perspectives from diverse voices. Each selected story will be accompanied by a c. 300-word introduction by the author on their reflections / personal experience that inspired the story. Once selected, authors will be contacted to supply this additional text. This Way Lies Madness will be curated by Lee Murray and Dave Jeffery, award-winning author-editors with lived experience of mental illness and advocacy.   Lee Murray is from Aotearoa-New Zealand and is a Shirley...