Storyscape Journal Seeks Outside the Box Submissions

Storyscape Journal, The Literary Journal of Champions is seeking submissions. According to their site:

"Storyscape, a new literary journal that is story-centered, asks for your submission. We want your:

Short story, long story, overheard story, invented story, true story, false story, poetic story, oral story, historical story, crafted story, stolen story, visual story.

Just captivate us with the strength of the story. The premise of the journal is to expand the notion of what stories are while shaking up the labels we use to define them. To this end, we've come up with 4 sections of the journal: Truth, Untruth, We Don't Know and They Won't Tell Us, and Stories without Words. You label your own piece, which means you decide what 'the truth' means to you. All we want is to lean back, relax, and listen to your story.

We now have a rolling submission policy. The next issue will be published online in winter of 2009."

We e-mailed the editor, Anne Hays, for some clarification on the kinds of stories listed above and we got a very speedy response! It turns out that they have shortened the list to invented story, true story, overheard story, visual story, poetic story, audio story, found story, and given story. Their website will reflect this change soon.

Here is her answer to exactly what kind of stories move them:

Our actual categories/genres for the pieces are simply, "Truth," "Untruth," and "We Don't Know and They Won't Tell Us." The listed suggestions above are simply meant to convey that we are looking for a wide variety of storytelling methods. It's definitely not meant to limit people's options in an any way!

Here is an example of something we loved: In our last issue, Kimiko Hahn wrote two pieces specifically for us. In one piece she rewrote the same poem three times while changing and lengthening the ending. In her other piece, she interspersed attempts at writing a poem with diary entries in which she pondered the creative process, and where her work was heading. I was happy she sent these specific pieces, rather than simply sending us one solid "traditional" poem, which, if you look at our suggestion list of categories, we do potentially publish.

Our vision for this journal seems to be so outside what people think of when they think of "stories" that we are constantly re-explaining the vision, and looking for better ways to encourage creativity. At the end of the day, as is the case with all journals, the pieces in it speak louder than we can in terms of what we'd publish. Check out Chris Haske's piece in our current issue--it's totally genius. Or look at Amber Boardman's. And we are absolutely looking for people to push the envelope harder. What does that cliche even mean? We are looking for people to rip the envelope up into shreds and create new envelopes.

See Storyscape's submissions page for further information on how to submit, and thank you to Anne Hays for her responsiveness and clarity.