OF ZOOS Issue 13.1 – SAND THE GEARS
Wherever we are, whatever histories we grew up in, however we lead our lives, we are all somehow shaped by machines. Machines that may look like rising sea levels, surveillance capitalism, neocolonialism, genocide, a stiflingly mundane life, anything that demands ideological conformity. And though we have all been conditioned by the systems we live in, each of us still has tremendous power. What would it look like if we used our art to throw sand into—instead of oil—the gears of the machine?
With our eyes on the machines that run our world, and in solidarity with the injustices around us near and far, this issue, we’d like to invite writers, makers, creators, and disrupters to submit work that throws sand into the gears of the machine. As Vajra Chandrasekera writes: “If you want to understand ten thousand struggles across the face of this earth, look at Palestine, then look back at where you live. The world resonates; history reverberates.” Even as we write personally, specifically, or locally, our works have the energy to accumulate as larger movements of interruption, even self-interruption, and we’re curious to witness and engage. We’re particularly interested in things that refuse to toe party lines and instead explore new narratives and possibilities.
Send us scribbles, sketches, and voice notes; long epics and flash (non)fictions; multi-part blogposts and peer-reviewed drafts; a tricky experiment or your regular sonnet. Send us things we never could have expected.
Important Update
After more than a decade of existence, we’re pleased to announce that we’ll be paying our contributors for previously unpublished work. We began in 2012 as a single-person show and have grown to a three-person team. Over the years, we’ve not solicited donations or received funding in order to remain independent, and we don’t charge submission fees. We don’t have plans to change any of that; however, it is high time that we pay for what we publish to recognize the value of every contributor who has trusted us to give their work a home! Thank you, too, to the whole cohort of contributors who trusted us years prior, and we hope to keep collaborating with you.
We offer payment for previously unpublished work. (We are still open to accepting submissions that have already been published elsewhere if they add value to the current issue; however, we can’t offer payment for them.)
We offer USD10/SGD14 for a single poem or short prose piece; USD20/SGD27 for a long poem (or a series of short poems in sequence), a long prose piece, or visual art (including a collection or sequence). This is a modest start, and we hope to keep reviewing our payment capabilities as situations change.
For works with multiple authors, including translations, payment will be split equally between collaborators.
For genre-bending works or formats that don’t fit neatly into these categories, we’ll discuss fair compensation to the best of our abilities.
Unfortunately, our payment rates include any administrative fees. We’d love to discuss how best to minimise this, especially if you’re based outside of the US or Singapore.
Submission Guidelines
Submit your work to ofzooseditor@gmail.com for consideration by September 15, 2024. Do include an updated contributor’s biography, as well as a brief description of your work if it needs one.
|Previous Features|
2.1 — Riff, Steal, Collaborate
5.1 — Varieties of the English
7.1 — R O U G H M A T E R I A L
