Open Call for June Edition of Smashing Times Newsletter: ‘Ordinary Stories’
Smashing Times Centre for the Arts and Equality would like to invite submissions to the upcoming June edition of the Smashing Times Newsletter. This month’s theme is ‘Ordinary Stories’. This theme links in with celebrations of Bloomsday (16 June), the day over which James Joyce’s Ulysses takes place, a novel that illuminates and elevates ordinary, everyday experience. The newsletter will focus on ordinary people’s stories, their seemingly average struggles which, in their dignity and uniqueness, contain shades of the extraordinary.
Submissions are welcome in any genre or form. A few notes:
- If submitting poetry, please send a maximum of two poems (of any length).
- Only one article or essay may be submitted, and it must be under 1,000 words.
- If submitting a short story, or an extract from a novel or play, please send just one, consisting of 2,500 words or less.
- If sending a photograph, a painting, a photograph of a sculpture, or a photograph of an architectural work, please submit one only. Please also ensure the image is of a high quality.
- If submitting a song, a short film, a video artwork, a feature-film excerpt, or a dance piece, please send just one, and ensure it runs to 10 minutes or less. Likewise, please make sure it is of a high audiovisual calibre.
- You may submit in one artform only.
- All submitted work should be previously unpublished, though we can accept pieces that have solely appeared on your personal website or blog, or have been performed live (and not recorded to be shared on a public platform).
- If we’ve published your work before, please leave a gap of three editions before submitting again. (So if you were included in May, you can submit again in September.) Furthermore, if you have a piece rejected, you are welcome to submit to the next edition.
- The theme is flexible; the work could centre on an ordinary element of life, its intricacies or covert distinctiveness, or perhaps the far-from-mundane aspects of life and self we all share. Tales of the everyday struggler, the downtrodden, the neglected, or the unsung hero would also be suitable.
Please submit in a word document to communications@smashingtimes.ie by 5pm Monday, the 12th of June, including a max two-line biography to accompany your piece.
- If accepted, the editor will contact you with at least one round of suggested edits, so please monitor your email closely in that case.
- Furthermore, if your work is accepted, it will appear not only in the newsletter but on the Smashing Times website (www.smashingtimes.ie) and possibly across our social media channels.
- Not all submissions will be accepted, unfortunately.
- Publication is unpaid, regrettably, as we are a small charity with limited resources. However, the newsletter reaches around 900 people, including many members of Ireland and Dublin’s artistic communities, and a range of major arts organisations.
- Submissions are especially welcome from individuals who have been underrepresented historically, such as ethnic minorities, members of the Traveller community, the LGBTQI+ community, women, and people with disabilities.
