WE WANT pieces that carry the indelible mark of mankind writ into their pages, words, their individual characters, down to the serifs, even the creases and the tears.

Handwritten, homemade paper, sewn and stitched binding, drawings, ergotic, erotic, morose, humorous, sensical, fiction, fact, satire, poetry, esoteric, origami, calligraphy, pen, pencil, ink, milk or gasoline, if its made by a human and about humans making a place for themselves in this world, we want it. We want raw emotions, sensory overload, triumphal and defeated and we want it MADE BY HAND.

This isn’t about finding efficiency or the greatest audience, we delight in the smudges and fingerprints, the odd bug that found its way between the plate and the page or the spot of mold that grew out on your homemade paper, providing a border where words dare not cross.

TO BE CLEAR, we will NOT accept any work that came from a printer, or that’s emailed to us. The work needs to be HANDWRITTEN in block, cursive, calligraphy, whatever odd jig your hand does, with words underlined in pen and letters made bold for emphasis, drawings in the margins encouraged. We want form to be questioned, stories that require folding the page or turning it upside down or that can only be read under a blacklight or, even, carved onto a coconut–we’ll have issues incorporating that into the anthology, but you do you.

WHAT TO SEND

We’re looking for art in the written word. Send us fiction, poetry, essays, etc.

For a limited time, we’re also looking for illustrations.

The call, the prompt, the general vibe of the story or poem should be about humans, our history grand or small, societal or personal. It should be about our struggles against systems of our own design. It can be as intimate as a poem about a first kiss or as grand as a cyberpunk detective finding out he’d been hired to fail. And all of it should carry a history, in the pen, in the paper, in the names, in the callbacks–it should carry PROVENANCE.

We’re genre agnostic here, but we’re not too keen on buckets of gore, fanfic or pornography. Sex & violence are fine though, even graphic descriptions, but they needs to have a weight, a subtext to them. They need to serve a purpose beyond shock and titillation–think “R” not “X.”

PLEASE include an additional document with contact details (ie name, email) and any additional details about the piece that fall outside of the story and the medium its told with; think of it as a cover letter that might go into your thought process on the paper used, the style of cursive or simply list out content warnings.

WORD COUNT

Please only send a total of 2,500 words max. It can come in the form of a single short story or ten micros or a half-dozen poems, all we care about is the total word count.

AI POLICY

Do we need to say it? Have we been unclear? If we determine a piece came from AI, the “author” will be blacklisted.

HOW TO SEND

Snail-mail your works to:

TBD

THE SMALL PRINT

Please do not pitch us your piece, just send it.

We will request a bio and First North American Serial Rights upon acceptance, contact & contract to be sent via email, so you better include that in your cover letter.

By submitting, you grant us a one-time right to reproduce your piece in this anthology; you keep your copyright and the rights to reproduce it will be relinquished by us six months following publication.

By submitting, you grant us a life-time right to the physical piece; these pieces will be incorporated into the bound print runs of the anthology and sold.

Simultaneous submissions are fine, just let us know if you piece is picked up elsewhere.

We do our best to respond to each submission. If you haven’t heard back in 6 months, reach out to admin [at] provenanceanthology [dot] com. Please don’t resubmit.

Payment, if accepted, will be a copy of the printed anthology.