Call for Submissions….

1. MY FAVOURITE FEMALE CONTEST

Welcome to the Women’s Web’s ‘My Favourite Female’ contest, where all you need to do is write about a fictional female character that really appeals to you. (For purposes of this contest, we’re defining ‘fictional’ as a character from a novel).

What? Pick any female character from a novel, that made you sit

up, that made you go wow, that made you laugh or cry, that got you angry, that got you thinking, that made you fall

in love – in short, a character that made you feel, ‘I wish I had written that!’

How? Tell us what you liked about this character in a blog post. If you don’t blog – drop a note in the comments here, or mail us at [email protected] . Remember, the character herself doesn’t need to be likeable, so long as you can talk about why the character appealed to you – actions, qualities or anything else.

Rules

– Stick to 500 words or below

– Choose a fictional character – in other words, someone from a novel, who did not exist in the real world (sorry, historical novel characters based on actual people won’t qualify!)

– Your entry must be dated between 12th Oct and 22nd Oct, 2010 (or reach us between those dates)

– If you’re submitting a blog post, include a link to this page – we’ll track your entry that way. (http://womensweb.in/top-level-documents/favourite-females.html)

THE PRIZES

The best written entry a.k.a 1st prize wins a Rs. 500 Flipkart voucher (or a $10 Amazon voucher if you happen to live outside India). The next two best written entries (2nd and 3rd prizes) get Rs. 250 worth Flipkart vouchers each (or a $5 Amazon voucher if you live outside India).

All 3 winning entries will also be published on the Women’s Web blog.

Go on then – remember, entries close on 22nd Oct 2010, so get your entry in before that…

SI Universe Media is proud to announce — the hotly anticipated followup to SECRET IDENTITIES: THE ASIAN AMERICAN SUPERHERO ANTHOLOGY — SECRET IDENTITIES VOLUME 2: SH

ATTERED!

After 18 months of much-needed downtime, we’re excited to announce that work is now underway on a second volume of all-new tales set in the grand tradition of heroic graphical fiction: SECRET IDENTITIES VOLUME 2: SHATTERED, targeting a 2012 publication date.

Thanks to a generous development grant from the Vilcek Foundation, we’ve begun the monumental task of putting together a sequel to Secret Identities — one tha

t we hope will be even bigger, better and more boundary-breaking than the original. Shattered will take readers to the darker side of the Secret Identities universe, exploring the nefarious, sinister and menacing side of the good guy/bad guy equation in order to upend, reenvision, reimagine — to shatter — the distorted and negative images that have shadowed Asian Americans since the earliest days of our arrival in this country.

This time out, we’re looking for stories that showcase strong and vivid interactions between heroes and villains — even stories with the ‘villain’ as protagonist — as a way to question the power of perception to shape reality. We’re also looking to incorporate a broader range of comic genres — superheroes, and more..

And we’re looking for you to contribute.

WRITERS: Send us your pitches (NOT completed scripts). ARTISTS: Email us your sample art — or point us to an online portfolio.

There are two sides to every story…

And we here at CatsCurious Press think that our readers deserve to read BOTH!

A Call for Submissions… of the Faery Taile Kynde! The Faery Taile Project #2 is ready to roll!

CatsCurious Press will re-open to submissions starting October 1, 2010 for all well-written, humorous fairy tale re-tellings (except red riding hood, but that’s because we’ve been there, done that)! But there’s a catch — these stories must be written from ONE POV only… the protagonist’s.

Why would we be so strict, you ask? Because Anton Strout, author of ‘Dead To Me’, ‘Deader Still’, ‘Dead Matter’ and ‘Dead Waters’ has already gotten on board to write a counterpoint story! That’s right — once we have plowed our way through the slush, Anton will review our favorite stories and then choose ONE from among them to write a counterpoint to.

Here are the requirements:

Story length must be between 7500 and 12,000 words

Stories must be humorous

Stories must appeal to a broad range of folks — from twelve years old to adult (so no raunchy humor, please!)

Stories must be single POV, from the protagonist’s point of view (this will take some finesse — leaving enough details to the imagination that Anton can create a counterpoint, yet creating a rich-enough world that the reader won’t be left wanting)

Submission period: October 1st, 2010 to 11:59:59pm December 31st, 2010

Send Submissions to: [email protected]

Any fairy tale is fair game (except red hood of course, for obvious reasons)!

The payment? $.06 per word and seeing your name next to Anton Strout’s!

I’m curating a special issue on Kashmir for Pratilipi. The immediate provocation of course is the cycle of killings and protests that has gripped the Valley since June. I’ve been wondering: Can art – along with what we know as analysis and activism – analyze, activate, respond? Can art change the discourse? Challenge it? At least introduce a ripple in it?

If something can change a dream, or a nightmare, art can. The dream life of art can take us outside the most relentless of curfews and also to its most relentless inside. Every stroke of a pen, a brush, on a keyboard can wrap inside itself a stone which will heal a scar, stop violence, and bring what’s disappeared back. Do you believe? We must believe.

Your mandate for investigation: Kashmir.

Inviting poetry, fiction, non-fiction, genre-crossings, translations, images, artwork, sound, video, and other art practices. Entries are welcome in English, Hindi, Kashmiri, Urdu, and other languages.

Submit to [email protected] by November 20, with your name and a brief bio.

Traditionally, the dustbin has always been an author’s best friend. It holds all their untold stories. It is a place for rejects, a place where unfinished ideas – to use a euphimism – go to rest. Ideas that never get developed for a variety of reasons viz. no time, no inclination, no faith, no future – you get the idea.

Enter the d.ustb.in – the author’s NEW best friend. The difference? The stories that enter the d.ustb.in are not treated as discards or rejects; rather they are proudly featured & displayed for the world to see and read. We believe that no story is bad enough to be discarded – it just needs some work, some appreciation and some more effort. No, we don’t publish all stories that are submitted – but we do give first-time authors a taste of the publishing process. Or so we like to think, at least. 🙂

To know more details, please check this link: http://d.ustb.in/about/

For authors:

We welcome unpublished short stories from all literary genres: contemporary, fan-fiction, fantasy, fast, folklore, historical, humor, mystery, occupational, romance, thriller, tragedy & under-age. We’re not accepting adult/erotica as of now – keeping it clean, sort of. 🙂

Short-stories posted on your OWN personal blogs are also welcome – in fact we’ll link back to your blog!

We have a strict NO PLAGIARISM policy – if the story is found published elsewhere, the author gets blacklisted for all future submissions.

We believed in Standard Manuscript formats for submission.

Further details and guidelines for submission can be found here: http://d.ustb.in/submit/guidelines/

Every Sunday at 10 AM sharp, we publish a batch of stories that have been read, reviewed & curated by a team of short-fiction aficionados.