SUBMIT YOUR GAY FABLES, SUSPENSEFUL TALES & QUEER BEDTIME STORIES. Yes, it’s a queer retelling of The Thousand and One Nights.
In those original Arabian Entertainments, the king is on a killing spree–marrying a new woman each night and killing her in the morning. Enter the learned Scheherazade. She volunteers to marry the king and tells him a compelling story each night. Each morning he agrees to let her live one more day. With her stories, she saves her own life and the lives of all the women in the kingdom. Her stories are not overtly persuasive, but rather entertaining (buying time), suspenseful (how could he kill her before he finds out what happens next?) Or stealthy/subversive/heart-opening (quietly influencing the king’s domination-consciousness through the magic of storytelling). If you want to read the original Arabian Nights, check out the Husain Haddawy translation–excerpts can be found on Google).
The Queer Retelling
The power dynamics of the original text come through in the queer retelling. The concept: In a hotel room in an unnamed state capital, a young gay rent boy tells stories to his regular John, a Republican state senator, in order to delay the introduction of anti-gay legislation.
The interior stories in this collection will consist of new work and retold fables by contemporary writers. (Maybe you?)
The stories can be literal retellings of the original 1,001 stories–or have parallels–but neither is required. I’m just looking for queer fabulist stories, suspenseful stories, Luis Jorge Borges-style shorts, and/or stories you’d truly want to read to your lover at night (even if he’s not a senator). What kind of story would convince a closeted senator to delay introduction of his bill?
Stories can be 1,000 to 5,000 words — longer stories should be suspenseful so they’ll lend themselves to be told over several nights.
Deadline: September 1st.
Ariel Gore - arielgore at earthlink dot net
If you email your submission, be sure to write “submission” somewhere in the subject line
Or sent it snail mail:
Ariel Gore
5 Bisbee Ct. #109 PMB 21
Santa Fe, NM 87508
Via: lambdaliterary.org
Contact Information:
For inquiries: arielgore at earthlink dot net
For submissions: arielgore at earthlink dot net
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