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Women’s Wonderlands – a collection of great lesbian travel writing.
Dear Lesbian Writer,
I am currently soliciting submissions for a new anthology from University of Wisconsin Press, which will be a sister edition to Wonderlands: Good Gay Travel Writing, edited by my friend and editor Raphael Kadushin. Wonderlands has had terrific success, selling out of its first print run after the W hotel chain made copies of the book available to selected guests.
Now, Raphael has asked me to put together and edit a collection of travel stories by lesbian writers, and I would be pleased if you would submit a piece (or two!).
For this anthology of lesbian travel writing, we do not want travel writing per se – please, no destination pieces, no hotel-beach-tour reviews, nothing that would be even remotely right for Condé Nast Traveler. Wonderlands pieces are emphatically not consumer travel pieces; they are impressionistic, literary travel pieces in the tradition of fine travel writing. There are no forbidden topics, but we don’t want anything very dogmatic. What we do want an anthology of personal stories that have a strong travel element. In other words, the stories should be about people, but the place should matter too.
If you’re wondering what that means, I suggest that you read Wonderlands itself -- you can order it from Amazon. In this collection by gay men, nearly every piece is beautifully written, moving, funny, or all three. You could also read my book, Mr. Ding’s Chicken Feet, or Sailing to the Far Horizon by Pam Bitterman for a guide to the kind of travel narrative that Raphael and I like. But best of all, send your own stories of adventure, of falling in or out of love, of exploration or ex-patriation, or danger or senseless self-indulgence. . .send stories of personal growth, stories of lesbian heart and spirit and, oh yeah, travel.
Women’s Wonderlands will offer a small honorarium to individual contributors – probably $50 USD. Many of the contributors to the first Wonderlands chose to donate their honorarium go to support the work of Living Out, a long-standing gay/lesbian list from the U of Wisconsin Press.
Please send your submissions to womenswonderlands@gmail.com There is no minimum page length, but please no more than 30 double-spaced pages. You may send work that has been published previously, as long as you retain the rights for republication (we can’t pay permissions fees).
I aim to have a draft collection put together by the end of 2007, so please send me your work no later than Nov. 15th 2007.
Best wishes,
Gillian
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