Cozy in the Apocalypse
Edited by Chun Hyon Lee and Naomi Simone Borwein
Open until filled
Edited by Chun Hyon Lee and Naomi Simone Borwein, Cozy in the Apocalypse is a call for fiction and poetry of the speculative genres (Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Weird). Hoping to create contrasting emotions with apocalyptic settings, we require pieces that capture the interplay of two specific different themes in this call: cozy and apocalypse.
What does cozy mean to us?
Cozy means comfortable or comforting: soft sunsets, kittens mewing in their sleep, or sipping coffee as the chickadees chirp in the morning. We want at least one scene exploring cozy in this manner.
Okay… but what about apocalypse?
Apocalypse should be the setting in which you place your piece. It can be in a pre-, mid-, or post-apocalypse. And we see an apocalypse as a major event that changes the norms of a society. That includes our Earth, but any number of other Earths, or realities you feel like writing about.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
$25 per short story or flash fiction varying from 500 words to 8000 words. Submit one story or up to two flash fiction pieces for this call.
$20 per poem from minimum of 25 lines to a maximum of 100 lines. Include up to three poems in your submission.
Submit all pieces in one word document.
Submit only original unpublished work.
Payment is $20 per poem and $25 per short story or flash (paid in US dollars via PayPal).
PLEASE USE Standard Manuscript format: https://www.shunn.net/format/story/1/
Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please notify us immediately if your work it has been accepted elsewhere.
We will not accept AI-written work.
No multiple submissions.
The anthology will be published in print and ebook format.*
*All contributors will be offered a chance to review their galley proofs before publication. All contributors will receive an electronic copy of Cozy in the Apocalypse. No AI artwork will be included in the volume.
We are open to creative interpretations of this theme.
We are not seeking stories of an erotic nature, though sex may be a topic.
We are not interested in anything featuring sexual violence, or unnecessarily graphic violence of any kind, against humans or animals.
CLOSED (OLD CALL 2024-2025)
NOW CLOSED FOR SUBMISSIONS
Submissions closed on March 31, 2025.
New Themed Call For Submissions
THIS EXQUISITE TOPOLOGY
a collection of happy abstractions
Edited by
Naomi Simone Borwein and Chun Hyon Lee
“The continuous reforming and deforming of levels of narrative reality around moments of joy…”
Payment
FF/F $25
Poetry $10
Deadline
Open Until Filled
What we are looking for
slipstream, speculative—science fiction, horror, fantasy, weird— and fabulist pieces exploring the radiance, awe, and exuberant thrall of “This Exquisite Topology” in short stories (1k-6k), flash fiction (~500-1k), or poetry (no line limit).
Submitted works should be cast through the lens of joy, exploring deformations and reformations of new landscapes and environments, new worlds, new beings, new moments of singularity or multiplicity, new visions, new paradoxes, or a redressing of old ones. Happy endings are not a requirement, just an engagement with the notion of happiness and the concept of Topology, using a speculative approach.
But what is topology?
Topology is “the study of geometric properties and spatial relations unaffected by the continuous change of shape or size of figures” (Oxford Dictionary). Consider “properties of spaces that are invariant [don’t change] under any continuous deformation.” These “[o]bjects can be stretched and contracted,” like the narrative landscape itself but still “remain unbroken.” Topology is also used in string theory “for describing the space-time structure of [the] universe” (University of Waterloo, “What is Topology?”).
In speculative fiction and poetry, Topology also constitutes blending genres and states that rupture categorizations and create new ones.
The idea of “speculative topology,” as “a paradoxical topology,” floats “beyond the limitations of temporal thinking, [and] can grasp the [narrative] object in its inherent contradictions,” thereby creating “a new ‘imaginary’ capable of” embodying and overcoming the very limitations of how bodies, physical and symbolic objects, beings, topographical spaces, are constituted together and in singularity (as transcendental aesthetics and stylistics). From the perspective of our anthology, This Exquisite Topology, “[t]he spectral Other is thus ineradicable,” forever fomenting “an attempt to estrange people from the laws of the [fictional] world” (Taheri 2021, 18-20; Lacan, 2001, 472; Hegel, 2008, 160–161).
You are invited to write your own version of a world inhabited by “an entity that lacks concrete existence and which is yet impossible to escape.” This world, where, the “speculative proposition” is a paradox, where the spectral becomes the material and vice versa, functioning like a speculative mobius strip.
Deforming “otherworldly realms,” this topological “tightrope upon which” we “walk is situated precisely between” different worlds, where a “spectre is nothing other than the torsion on the surface creating the illusion of height and the fear that we may fall” (Taheri 2021, 55, emphasis my own). Herein, lies the inherent horror and awe.
Our theme connotes the reforming and deforming of every level of narrative reality from the cellular make up of plants to the organic, abstraction of the living universe, the living sun: from x-ray crystallography, to the way plants breathe, to the “transmembrane crystal structure[s] [… that] showed the exquisite topology and orientation of […] that which is striking the seemingly homogeneous.” Like these transactions, in stories and poetry, the visual and symbolic “cues and information” control and generate material reality. Stories and poems should restructure terrain[s] of contingently assembled durations, velocities, intensities’” (Jacobs and Merriman, 2011, 218; Deisenhofer et al. 1985; Swanson et al., 1990; emphasis my own).
From Earth to the cosmos, the scattering of the stars and their living warp and curvature, that make up the starscape, can be mapped out in urban spaces in many types and forms of environments that create “material spaces of hope” and reveal the multiple “topological inflections of things” (Barba Lata and Duineveld 2019, 1769).
How do we define “Exquisite”?
For this collection we are looking for powerful depictions, with verve; for stories that transcend concrete parameters of the space-time of being. But these works should embrace the serene, blissful, intoxicating, tranquil, ecstasy, pleasure, happiness, joy, “Happy tears,” while reveling in delight; perhaps expressing philic/manic obsession and irresistible desire; clamoring for Freedom (eleutheromania or eleutherophilia the “mania or frantic zeal for freedom”), for deformation, for the transformation of being and states of awareness; expressing awe of the living universe—space, solar, stellar, (helio ‘refracted and divine’), showcasing solar bodies; earthly bodies; beyond being and knowing.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Please submit 1-5 poems (with a maximum of 100 lines for each poem), 1 short story (of 1k-6k words), or up to 2 flash fiction pieces (500-1k each).
Only original unpublished work
Payment is $10 per poem and $25 per short story or flash (paid via PayPal). A physical copy of the book can be sent to you in lieu of payment.
Submit via email: angrygablepress (at) gmail (dot) com
Subject header: LAST NAME, GENRE: “Title”
Cut and paste your work into the body of your e-mail and include a 100-word bio in third person along with a cover letter. Please also include a line or word count in your cover letter. If your submission is accepted, we will ask for a Word Document of your work.
Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please notify us immediately if it has been accepted elsewhere.
We will not accept AI-written work.
No multiple submissions
The anthology will be published in print and ebook format.*
*All contributors will be offered a chance to review their galley proofs before publication. All contributors will receive an electronic copy of This Exquisite Topology. No AI artwork will be included in the volume.
We are open to creative interpretations of this theme.
We are not seeking stories of an erotic nature, though sex may be a topic.
We are not interested in anything featuring sexual violence, or unnecessarily graphic violence of any kind, against humans or animals.
CLOSED (OLD CALL 2023)
Extrasensory Overload: an anthology of speculative excess
Deadline to submit: December 29, 2023
Angry Gable Press is currently seeking short stories and poetry of science fiction, fantasy, and horror that explore the theme of sensory overload for inclusion in the collection called Extrasensory Overload: an anthology of speculative excess, edited by Naomi Simone Borwein and Chun Hyon Lee.
Sensory overload is traditionally defined as over stimulation of the senses, when light, sound, smell, taste, touch flood the brain, and distort perception—causing what easily translates into speculative aesthetics.
We are seeking submissions that actively engage readers with multi-sensory (more than one sense), supra (beyond the five senses), super or extra sensory experience (including paranormal, ESP, etc.) as part of speculative fiction and poetry.
Stories and poems must feature or make use of the theme, but the theme does not necessarily need to be central.
Extra sensory aesthetics pervade fiction and poetry, with many popular examples, but in light of the contemporary push towards blended and meta universes, we are looking for something new and topical.
We are open to creative interpretations of this theme and welcome pieces that seek to describe new experiences and sensory explorations.
We are not seeking stories of an erotic nature, though sex may be a topic.
We are not interested in anything featuring sexual violence, or unnecessarily graphic violence of any kind, against humans or animals.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Please submit 1-3 pieces of poetry (with a maximum of 100 lines for each poem), or 1 short story (of 500-6000 words).
- Only original unpublished work
- Payment is $5 per poem and $10 for each short story (paid via PayPal)
- Submit via email: angrygablepress (at) gmail (dot) com
- Subject header: LAST NAME, GENRE: “Title”
- Cut and paste your work into the body of your e-mail and include a 100-word bio in third person along with a cover letter. Please also include a line or word count in your cover letter
- Simultaneous submissions are allowed
- We will not accept AI written work
- No multiple submissions
The anthology will be published in print and ebook format.
See Also Call for Poetry Submissions to Katabatic Circus
Angry Gable Press 