Deadline: April 21st, 2024
Payment: $200 CAD and a contributors copy
Theme: Canadian characters living their ‘super’ lives while still retaining their national/regional identity/connection.

We’re looking for stories that push the usual superhero tropes while shining a spotlight on unique corners of Canada. We want stories set in and around the nation’s more often overlooked locales—isolated small towns, remote reservations, bedroom communities, and other underrepresented areas of Canada. Give us rural superheroes, backwater supervillains, and tales of characters/communities at a crossroads.How does place impact your character? Are they unable to reconcile their superpowers with their residence or is it the people who pose the problem? Does your hero struggle to maintain a secret identity where everyone knows everyone or do they find that familiarity weirdly comforting given the challenges of being superpowered?

Submission Guidelines:

 

• Word Count: 500-3500
• Canadian characters living their ‘super’ lives while still retaining their national/regional identity/connection.
• Stories that know the tropes and cliches—those applied to superheroes and Canada both—and either explore or subvert them.
• Heroes that reconcile their superpowers with the limits of their home—geographic, political, economic…heck, tie in the weather—so long as they’re original characters with strong connections to specific parts/cultures of Canada.
• Have your protagonists face situations unique to our nation/their region thereof. These can be silly or serious, inspired by reality or entirely fictional.
• Tell us about everyday Canadians. Folks often excluded from mainstream literature—the ignored, overlooked, and undervalued. (Including cultures, genders/sexual orientations, ages, economic groups, and faiths.)
• Genre-busting tales are encouraged. A superhero mystery or an origin story couched as a romance. Submitted stories do not have to be about superheroes per say (tales of supervillains and anti-heroes are welcome), but should tie into that theme in some way.
• Please avoid extreme violence, unnecessary profanity, and/or graphic sexual content.
• Submission deadline: April 21, 2024

 

Editors

Andy Taylor grew up as a teen in the 1980s reading Alpha Flight comics and was excited to see Canadian superheroes represented for the first time. A member of the Sudbury Writers’ Guild, a graduate of the Viable Paradise writing workshop and Playwright’s Junction workshop, and a member of CODEX writer’s forum. Originally from Sault Ste. Marie, Andy currently lives in Sudbury with his family. His writing has appeared in On Spec Magazine, FictionVale, Polar Borealis, Sudbury Ink Anthology and the forthcoming anthology Sudbury Superstack: A Changing Skyline.

Matthew Del Papa spent every Tuesday of his youth criss-crossing his hometown of Capreol in search of newly arrived comic books. He wore superhero-themed Underoos to a truly worrying age and still has his Batman (and Robin) lunchbox, backpack, and wristwatch. A graduate of Laurentian University, Matthew is a writer, editor, and self-publisher, and has released ten titles to some modest local acclaim. He joined the Sudbury Writers’ Guild in 2009 and his writing has appeared in Spooky Sudbury, Nothing Without Us Too, Mighty, and the forthcoming Sudbury Superstack: A Changing Skyline. His first book is a collection of humorous essays titled Jerry Lewis Told Me I Was Going to Die (Latitude 46, 2023).

Payments and Rights

Compensation for stories accepted in this anthology is $200.00. We are looking for world English language rights, exclusive for the first year of print and non-exclusive afterwards. You will also receive a complimentary copy of the anthology.

For more information please contact [email protected]

Via: Latitude 46 Publishing.