What does ‘home’ mean to you? With millions of people driven from their homes all over the world, ‘shelter’ often equates to ‘safety’. Closer to home, at least 120,000 children in the UK were homeless for Christmas 2016. Shelter, the charity that helps people who are homeless or in poor housing, needs our help more than ever.

We’ve been here before, of course. Three years ago, we formed a community to produce an anthology which raised over £3,000 for Shelter. We are now open for submissions for Stories for Homes Volume 2. The plan is to launch the e-book in September 2017 and a paperback version in November 2017. As before, all royalties will go directly to Shelter.

Submission guidelines:

• Stories (poems also considered) should be between 100 and 3000 words long (not including the title).
• The theme is HOME.
• Please send your story as a Word document in an attachment to sforh2@gmail.com AND copy in debi.alper@gmail.com. It’s important to send it to both email addresses.
• DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR NAME ON THE ATTACHMENT. Submissions will be considered anonymously. All writers are welcome to submit – published, yet-to-be published and those who were included in Stories for Homes Volume One. Anonymous submissions will give a level playing field to all those submitting.
• The deadline is midnight (UK time) 14th February 2017.

Whether or not your story is accepted for the anthology, there are many ways to get involved with the project. The whole process of creating and marketing the book is a community effort, with artists, photographers, techy experts etc joining with the editors and authors to create a world-class anthology. Most of the conversation takes place in a Facebook group, which is always open to new members. Updates will also be posted on the Stories for Homes website.