Call for Submissions: Desire

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Non-Contest Submissions: “Desire” (Issue 75)

UPDATE: We have re-opened non-contest submissions for fiction, nonfiction and poetry for the next two weeks, until Saturday, November 10th, 2018. Submit!

Contest Submissions: “Desire” (Issue 75)

Submission Period: September 24th – November 5th

Finalist Judges: 

Jo Ann Beard – Nonfiction Contest

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Nicole Walker – Flash Prose Contest

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A desire can be a vague wish, a sharp craving, a steadfast longing, a helpless obsession. It can signal an absence or a presence, a need or a commitment, an ideal or an impossibility. The root of the word “desire” links it to consider and to terms of investigation and augury, thereby reminding us that desire is often less what we feel than what we think about what we feel.
– J.D. McClatchy, Love Speaks Its Name
What we wish for, dream of, chase after, and resist against all might be traced to our feelings of desire. But as J.D. McClatchy notes, desire’s etymological roots come from consideration. Where can desire be found on the wide spectrum between contemplation and action? Does a child’s desire look anything like a spouses’? How does desire shape-shift from person to person, culture to culture?
Though it may be ever changing, we all are intimately familiar with desire. What does that intimacy look like when expressed for everyone to see?
Man differs from other animals in one very important respect, and that is that he has some desires which are, so to speak, infinite, which can never be fully gratified, and which would keep him restless even in Paradise.
– Bertrand Russell, Nobel Prize Speech
Can any desires be bottled up? If so, where do we find them?
Behind all art is an element of desire.
– Adrienne Rich, Interview from the Kelly Writers House

For Issue 75, we seek work that considers desire. Shows us desire in its many forms and how we go about expressing it.


Image source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-art-of-hidden-faces-anthropomorphic-landscapes/