Call for Submissions!
Due Friday, March 31, 2023
Please refer to our full submission guidelines for more information on submissions and accessibility
- Please send your submission and a 50-word biography to submissions@writingforchangejournal.org by Friday March 31, 2023
- Acceptance emails/revision requests will be sent by April 7, 2023.
- If you have questions, please contact the journal’s advisor, Kyle Boggs, at kyleboggs@boisestate.edu.
- We are happy to help you work through your ideas too!
Break the Ice (before it melts)
“So I tell you this not to scare you,
But to prepare you, to dare you
To dream a different reality.”
From Amanda Gorman’s poem, “Earthrise”
The fourth collection of the Writing for Change Journal centers on the most significant and wide-reaching form of change that there is today: climate change. We are interested in submissions that reflect the nuanced ways we experience climate change, how we think about impact, and how our research and daily experiences of climate change enrich our collective understanding and responsibility. We all share the planet, and when we share our experiences, we uncover new ways to find connections with each other. Our hope for this collection is that it depicts a snapshot of this uncertain historic moment that is diverse in both perspective and method of communication and reflection, from the hopeful and inspirational to the dreadful and traumatic, from mitigation strategies to adaptation, this collection promises to be one rooted in the experiences of those who live in our shared region.
The climate crisis itself signals many different forms of change, affected by context and proximity, ranging in scale from cataclysmic to microscopic. In September, The Idaho Statesman published 150 years of climate data analyzing heat, wildfire, and other environmental changes that have trended upwards over this time period. “It’s a totally different climate than our parents and grandparents grew up in,” said Jay Breidenbach, a meteorologist at the Weather Service Boise office. Locally and globally, we are watching record-breaking heat and wildfires, and other places are severely impacted by flooding, from regional locations like Yellowstone National Park to elsewhere in the country like Jackson, Mississippi. As a university community with international students from all over the globe and even more with family and friends abroad, the personal impact of climate change is far-reaching. These changes can be local to Idaho, to rivers, to mountains, but these changes can easily recall the emergencies experienced elsewhere.
Of course, we don’t get to choose the world we live in, but we do get to have a say in how we respond to it. The grand challenge of our time is finding hope, resilience, creativity, and love in a time of dread and despair.
This is a call for reflections, ideas, expressions, maybe even solutions, to some of the challenges we face as our planet’s climate changes. What does it mean to you? To your community? This is a call for sharing your role—our roles—in shaping our future, the future of our lands and waters, the forests and mountains, the wild lives and our lives. As a multimodal publishing space, we welcome everything from nonfiction narratives and poems to mixed media and visual art of all forms. We’d love to hear about what you’re working on, and we’re always happy to talk through your ideas.
Cover photography
Typically, representations of nature/nonhumans are used as cover art for each collection of the Writing for Change Journal. If you are a regional photographer and you have a photo that you think captures the tone of this collection’s theme, please consider submitting it. (Even outside of the cover art, photography of all kinds is welcomed submissions).