The waiting room. The late-night emergency. The person who takes an Uber instead of paying for an ambulance. We’re seeking flash fiction, nonfiction, and poetry about health, sickness, disability, and the gap between the care we need and what we can access.
Write about chronic illness and what it means to live inside a body that requires ongoing negotiation. We’re also interested in prose and poetry about birth, death, and surviving the middle. Who continues to show up—nurses, community health workers, that one neighbor who brings over dinner on bad days—and who disappears when health becomes a burden? If health is wealth, what happens when we can’t afford the bill? If you’ve ever been frustrated about getting sick in a system that makes it expensive to get better, we want you to write about it.
We welcome writing of all genres and forms: flash fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid work. Three winners will be selected and published at the end of October. To get a sense of what we publish, read our past winners.
We also offer editorial commentary on submissions. For an additional fee, you’ll receive two feedback notes from our experienced editors or readers. To learn more and submit, head to Duosuma.
Prizes:
- First place: $1,000 and publication
- Second place: $200 and publication
- Third place: $100 and publication
Judith Butler argued that gender isn’t something we are, but something we do. It’s a performance—one that either meets the status quo or subverts it. What happens when we refuse to perform? We’re seeking writing that pulls apart the categories: gender and sex, heteronormativity and transgression, the body we were assigned and the one we actually inhabit.
Send us your fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that questions what “normal” looks like, explores the ways we resist gender conformity, and finds power through that rebellion. We want writing about gender fluidity, non-normative relationships, and bodily autonomy. This theme is for everyone who has ever lived outside the lines—and for anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to try.
We welcome writing of all forms: flash fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid work. We’re especially interested in forms that enact their own kind of transgression, such as autofiction, speculative fiction, and experimental poetry.
Three winners will be selected and published at the end of July.
We are now offering editorial commentary on submissions. For an additional fee, you’ll receive two feedback notes from our experienced editors or readers. To learn more and submit, head to Duosuma.
Prizes:
- First place: $1,000 and publication
- Second place: $200 and publication
- Third place: $100 and publication
