Manifesting the Female Epic is an anthology of poetry, essay, enactment, discussion, incantation, adaptation, edited by Sarah Anne Cox & Elizabeth Treadwell and forthcoming from Lark. You can read more about our editorial process so far here and here. You can send us work by October 31, 2014. We hope that you will. Our bios follow our latest statements, and further details follow those.
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I'm particularly interested, right now, in visceral feminism, and in three terms I recently coined: the artemis zeitgeist (I'm actually not certain I coined this one first), which is reflected in everything from Brave to the Hunger Games, and is about the liminal space between the city and the wild, the story and the dream, and about girls and young women maintaining and reclaiming their power, their full awakened embodiment and intelligences and agencies; gorgon poetics, which is about the restoration and integration of all the aspects of the feminine which have been fractured by cultures' overdetermined senses of variety, binary, and separation; and holographic feminism, which is about the ways in which knowledge and identity can be transmitted and discerned through suprarational means, through intuition, through readings and experiences of the world unknown in patriarchal philosophies and colonializing narratives.
More than all of that, I am interested in hearing from others... what are your terms, your sources, your experiences, what information are you getting? What are you, how are you, reading and writing?
This anthology is not meant to be something we can pin down and shelve, but rather a calling into being and a repository, a collection, of a manifesting that is in play, now.
--Elizabeth Treadwell
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The myth of the goddess driven, matriarchal society a la Minoan Crete is a powerful one. I had in the past let go of this idea because of the lack of evidence justifying such a theory. Recently, however, it occurred to me that rather than a historical moment, this idea of the matriarchy exists as a mythology, a powerful narrative that can guide, much like the Jesus myth or the life of the Buddha. We don’t worry much about the archeological evidence of those stories, and we don’t expect it. They are narratives. The myth of matriarchy is in many ways, like the myth of Eden, but it speaks specifically to the feminine in much the same way that Eden speaks to the masculine, his world, her world. I am deep down inside atheist, but I’m also a ritual junkie and a mythophile. My interest in this anthology lies in the reception of myths of the heroine, both literally and figuratively. I can’t wait to read what is offered and I look forward to the various adaptations.
--Sarah Anne Cox
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The deadline for material for consideration in the anthology is October 31, 2014. Please send your work to Lark Books & Writing Studio, PO Box 22786, Oakland, CA 94609 US, or via email (as a single PDF) to us at feminine epic at gmail dot com. Please include a short note and bio, and postage for anything you need returned. We will respond as quickly as possible, within a few months at most, and the book may be out as early as fall 2015, definitely by early 2016.
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Additional info no. 1: We are seeking an expansive, inclusive collection of vision and information and conversation, and hereby state as a clarion our hope to receive work from all of you who feel an affinity with this project, our deep interest in the work of writers from all cultural backgrounds, and of all our multiple genderings, abilities, and embodiments.
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Additional info no. 2: we are as yet a small, new, volunteer, independent operation (although we have years of experience and success in other projects and organizations between us). We believe that simultaneous submissions are your right as an author, however we ask that in exchange for our commitment to a quick response (3 months max), you allow us that time to consider your manuscript solely for this project. If selected, all rights remain with the author; however we would ask that in exchange for the quick publication of the book and in respect of the anthology as a whole event to occur in late 2015 or early 2016, you refrain from publishing your piece elsewhere prior to its publication in the anthology. Finally, authors will be paid for their work in an equitable manner depending on funding and sales. Thank you.