Reflections on and Responses to 2020
Call for Submissions! Due January 8
Thank you for your interest in submitting to the Writing for Change Journal. The Writing for Change Journal (WFC) is a multimodal online publishing space that focuses on and challenges our understanding of the two key words, writing and change. Submissions for the first edition of the Writing for Change journal are open to Boise State students and community members to draft, write, revise and submit their work to a local platform. The first collection will be debuted in March of 2021, and will be broad in scope, focusing on themes relating to change in 2020.
Writing for Change in 2020, the first collection
In this inaugural digital collection for the Writing for Change Journal, we welcome individual and collaborative public-facing reflections on and responses to change in the year 2020. This first edition asks contributors to explore what change means to them, their communities, and to the greater Boise community.
To say that 2020 is a year of great change is a profound understatement. As this call for submissions goes out, the worst pandemic in a century is surging throughout the world, hitting the United States particularly hard with hundreds of thousands of deaths, revealing vast inequalities and wide holes in our social safety net. The economic crisis, made worse by lack of compliance and the politicization of basic CDC guidelines, disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable of our communities, the effects of which will likely be with us for years to come. The killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and several others, as well as the modern day lynching of Ahmaud Arbery has renewed impassioned pleas from communities of color who have long called for police reform and a reckoning of racial justice in this country. Then there are the massive wildfires that have ravaged millions of acres across the west, choking out the sun with smoke so thick it reached the east coast. And in this moment, we find ourselves just weeks away from the most consequential and divisive presidential election this country has perhaps ever faced.
During this year we have learned that events large and small can change the way we understand the world and our place in it, that we need each other for support, solidarity, and survival. The cataclysmic challenges of 2020 have resulted in record unemployment, increases in deaths by suicide and addiction, rising rates of domestic violence, homelessness, anxiety, and depression, among others. The way these events overlap, depending on our vulnerabilities, privileges, and geographies, have and will continue to affect us all in different ways, and the trauma inflicted demands meaningful reflection and response.
Below are a few simple prompts to spark your ideas
- What does change mean to you today?
- How have you experienced change in 2020?
- Where do you see change happening in your community today?
- Where should we see change in our community today?
- How have you or someone you love and or respect fostered meaningful change in 2020?
- What are the relationships between change, empathy, compassion, respect, and equity, and how have you seen those relationships deepen or fracture in 2020, and to what affect?
Specifics and Guidelines
What we mean by change can signal the ways in which our writing affects and is affected by change, which can refer to social, cultural, political, and environmental change. While the scope of the journal’s content is intentionally broad, likely touching on issues that are part of national and international conversations, the work featured here is always local, and therefore all submissions should be written with this focus in mind.
Writing for change, or composing in the context of change, can take on many forms, from traditional and nontraditional approaches to nonfiction writing like essays and interviews, but also through the increasingly expansive possibilities of visual art and the sonic landscapes of video, podcasts, photography, performance art, and so much more. Not only do we invite creative submissions, but those that cross disciplinary boundaries as well. The Writing For Change Journal welcomes submissions from across campus disciplines, and from throughout the Treasure Valley.
Submission types are not limited to: articles, interviews, short stories, personal essays, poetry, prose, podcasts, videos, dance, and art.
- Essays should not exceed 2,000 words.
- When possible, link to outside sources in text.
- Digital artwork submissions can be in almost any format, but jpegs are preferable. Images should be at least 300 DPI (1200 x 1800 px).
- Large files such as audio or video files are welcomed, but not through email. Please email to make arrangements to transfer via Dropbox.
All inquiries that are not submissions should be directed to the email address below, or to the journal’s advisor, Dr. Kyle Boggs at kyleboggs@boisestate.edu
Submissions can be sent to: submissions@writingforchangejournal.org
All submissions are due on January 8th, 2021. Please include a 50-word author’s biography. All submissions will receive emailed responses no later than the end of January. The first edition is projected to debut in March. The editorial team will work with writers after the submission deadline to revise, at which time any revisions writers and creators would like to incorporate can be made.
Submissions that maintain ideologies or statements designed to make people feel unwelcome, unsafe, or lesser will not be tolerated and will immediately be rejected. We can and should examine such statements, through a critical framework of inquiry and empathy, but discriminatory language of any kind—based on race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, etc.—does not have any place in this journal.