Tag Archives: women writers

The Shadow Booth open to submissions from women writers only in January

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We’re pleased to announce that The Shadow Booth is open to fiction submissions from women writers only from 1–15 January 2019. This includes any transgender writers who identify as women, but we’d be grateful if male writers would refrain from submitting during this period. There will be another open submission period in the spring, which we will be announcing shortly.

Some basic guidelines:

  • We are a bi-annual journal of weird and eerie fiction. Do not send us your Western romance (in space). Do not send us your drug addiction memoir. Do not send us your shopping list (unless you’re buying some really weird things). Weird. Eerie. Fiction. Please.
  • If you want an idea of what we mean by weird and eerie, then read The Shadow Booth: Vol. 1 or Vol. 2 (or, preferably, both). This is the best way to find out what we like! The ebooks are currently only £2.99 via the Shadow Booth online store to encourage this, and like all independent publications, we need your support to keep going. Paperbacks and subscriptions are also available. If you want further pointers, why not read editor Dan Coxon’s article on the Ginger Nuts of Horror website: Face the Strange.
  • Submissions should be 1,000 – 8,000 words long. We won’t quibble over a word or two, but otherwise those limits are fixed. At present we’re particularly interested in shorter stories, between 1,000 – 3,500 words, but we will consider everything.
  • We are not considering reprints, but simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you inform us as soon as your story is accepted elsewhere.
  • Please only submit one story during the submissions period. Any further submissions during this period will be rejected. (We would say ‘send us your best’, but you know that already…)
  • Email your submission to submissions@theshadowbooth.com, with the word SUBMISSION as the first word of the Subject line. It’s also helpful if you include the story title.
  • Manuscripts should be submitted as a Word file attached to the email wherever possible. We’ll do our best to read .rtf files and PDFs, but we make no promises. DO NOT paste your story into the body of the email.
  • This submissions period is for Vol. 3 and Vol. 4, to be published in March and October 2019.
  • The important part: The Shadow Booth is a paying market, paying 1.5p per word. That works out as £15 per 1,000 words, if it’s simpler. While payments can be made to overseas writers (and we actively encourage writers from overseas to submit), payment is simplified if you have a Paypal account.

Submissions will close at midnight on 15 January 2019.

Liars’ League presents Women & Girls – Tuesday August 14th

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nev dress Arial big 2On Tuesday August 14th, Liars’ League proudly presents our annual short story soiree which sorts the women from the girls, and tells how the other half lives … (Click for Facebook event)

From truant wives to sarky schoolgirls, pyromaniac editors to teenage hookers via tantruming mums, our professional actresses and rising authors will give you a night of fantastic female-focused fiction.

WINNING STORIES for WOMEN & GIRLS
Trouble at the Uptown Espresso by Kristin King *NEW AUTHOR* – read by Sarah Gain
Tree House Date by S. Soliar *NEW AUTHOR* – read by Keleigh Wolf
How to be Unemployed by Alice Franklin *NEW AUTHOR* – read by Lois Tucker
Apotheosis of Maya and Bibi by Rebecca Skipwith – read by Susan Moisan
Homework by Anna Savory – read by Gloria Sanders

Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30 start and tickets are £5 on the door (cash only, sorry, but there is a cashpoint across the street). Drinks and food will be available at the bar, though there are also free sweets and the infamous interval quiz features fabulous books to be won! There’s no pre-booking, but tables for four or more can be reserved by calling 07808 939535.

The venue is the downstairs bar at:
The Phoenix Pub
37 Cavendish Square
London
W1G 0PP

Accessibility note: Access to the basement is via stairs: there is no lift, sadly.

The Phoenix is 5 minutes’ walk from Oxford Circus tube station, which is on the Victoria, Bakerloo and Central lines. Map here.

Flash Fiction Competition, London Independent Story Prize

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London Independent Story Prize, LISP is holding a writing contest. Their aim is to discover extraordinary artistic approaches to story writing, stories that embrace the diversity of gender and culture whilst being brave and passionate. They are looking for unique and strong voices. BAME, Women, and LGBTQ are especially welcome. They’ll be delighted to read it and you could be in with a chance to win!

Entries can be sent through their website www.londonindependentstoryprize.co.uk

Follow their Facebook and Twitter @LIStoryPrize for the announcements.

Early Bird Deadline: 1st of January 2018

Submissions Close on 10th of January

Winner announcements, on 10th of February

Prizes: £100 First, £30 Second, £10 Third

Check their amazing judge list from this link.LISP-5

Next Liars’ League event: Women & Girls

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women & girls text jpgLiars’ League‘s female-focused September event, Women & Girls (click for Facebook event), is a tasty selection of brand new short fiction by and about women (and girls), for everyone to enjoy. The show is on Tuesday 12th September, starting at 7.30pm (doors open at 7pm), when the winning stories will be performed by our marvellous Liars’ League actresses.
The six chosen pieces feature superhero(in)es, ventriloquists, obsession, depression, Victorian prisoners, charismatic polygamists, West Midlands spiritual healers, and all manner of enticing stuff besides …
WOMEN & GIRLS WINNING STORIES
Summer Season by Sally Syson NEW AUTHOR, read by Charlotte Worthing
Walk a Mile in My Shoes by Olga Wojtas NEW AUTHOR, read by Keleigh Wolf
Limbo by Sue Smith NEW AUTHOR, read by Jennifer Aries
Finding Jezza by Sally Lane NEW AUTHOR, read by Nicky Diss
The Ends of the Earth by Aileen O’Farrell, read by Annalie Wilson
Le Retreat by Fiona Salter, read by Sarah Gain
The night will also feature our infamous book quiz (with female-authored novels as prizes #readwomen) and free sweets, just because. Tickets cost £5 on the door (cash only, no advance booking) and seating is unreserved – so it’s a good idea to get there a bit ahead of time if you want a good table. Accessibility note: access to the basement bar is via stairs – there’s no lift, alas.

The venue is downstairs at:
The Phoenix
37 Cavendish Square
London
W1G 0PP

(The Phoenix is five minutes’ walk from Oxford Circus tube station, which is on the Victoria, Bakerloo and Central lines). Map here.

P.S. We got an amazing number of submissions for this theme – more than double our usual amount – so if we get a good turnout at the event we may make Women & Girls a regular theme. If you think this is a great idea, please do come along, bring your friends and tell everyone you know, of any and every gender, about it. Ta!

Paper Republic celebrates Women in Translation month, August 2016

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From June 2015 to June 2016, the Read Paper Republic team published a short story(or essay or poem) translated from Chinese, one a week for a year. For last year’s #WITmonth we published four pieces written by women and translated by women (nos 7-10). The rest of the time, we didn’t pay too much attention to the gender of the writer. So it’s cheering to see that over the entire year, of the 53 pieces we published, 22 were written by women. They are all available online – free to view here: https://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/. We’d like to thank all our authors and translators, and hope that you, the readers, enjoy the stories.

Also, in May 2016, we drew up a list for The Literary Hub, of 10 CHINESE WOMEN WHOSE WRITING SHOULD BE TRANSLATED: WRITING FROM MAINLAND CHINA, HONG KONG, AND TAIWAN. Read it here: http://lithub.com/10-chinese-women-whose-writing-should-be-translated/.

Read Paper Republic: Season One, and Survey!

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So, it’s rather gone by in a whirlwind, but we’ve reached the end of our first year of Read Paper Republic. Starting June 18 of last year, we’ve published 53 short pieces online, one each Thursday (there’s 53 weeks in a year, right?), and today’s publication of Li Jingrui’s One Day, One of the Screws Will Come Loose marks the end of what we’ve come to think of as “Read Paper Republic, Season One”.

We’re taking a short break! Nicky Harman, Helen Wang, Eric Abrahamsen and Dave Haysom have done a remarkable amount of work over the past year, and it’s time for a breather while we think about where to go from here.

Apropos of that, we have a request to make of you! We’ve created a very short online survey that we very much hope you’ll take a moment to fill out. It’s only a page, and will be invaluable to us as we look back over the past year of publications, and think about the future. Please take five minutes and help us fill it out!

So what will be next? We’re not sure yet. Over the next six months, we’re likely to make some more additions to the RPR lineup, probably based around events and author visits in various parts of the world. “Season One” was done with no funding whatsoever (thanks to all our editors, translators and authors!), and we’re very aware that we could make a hypothetical “Season Two” a lot better with a bit of support.

Got any good ideas for doing that? Please let us know in the survey!

Read Paper Republic: New short stories in Translation

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We at Read Paper Republic are a collective of literary translators, promoting new Chinese fiction in translation. Between 18th June 2015 and 16th June 2016, we are publishing a complete, free-to-view short story (or essay or poem), every Thursday (that’s #TranslationThurs) for a whole year. As part of Women In Translation Month, we have focused on four hugely talented and very different women writers (all the translators are women too!) for our short stories in August, 2015.

  • First up, Regurgitated by Dorothy (Hiu Hung) Tse, translated by Karen Curtis. A disturbingly [sur]real tale about a city that devours its children.
  • Then we have Missing by Li Jingrui, translated by Helen Wang. What would you do if your husband went missing for a few months? And then turned up as randomly as he disappeared?
  • Third comes A Woman, at Forty by Zhang Ling, translated by Emily Jones, who writes in her introduction: ‘Is there a word that means a sort of gentle, everyday disappointment? The kind that isn’t a crushing bolt from the blue but something that wears you down gradually over time?’
  • Then, Sissy Zhong by Yan Ge, translated by Nicky Harman: ‘Yan Ge’s stories of small-town life are full of acute comments on human relationships. She has a wonderful ear for the things that remain unsaid, as well as the way people actually talk to each other.’
  • And for the final story in our clutch of five, on Friday 28 August, there’s a story by author and poet Wang Xiaoni, translated by Eleanor Goodman. Yes, it will be one day late, but it’s worth waiting for!

Challenging, weird, funny, characterful, dark, beautiful, poignant, tragic, our stories are all of these and more. Don’t delay: dip a toe in the water, and start reading our short stories now! http://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/ or follow us on Facebook (Paper Republic) or Twitter @PaperRepublic.

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