Overview
Black Light Arts Collective (BLAC) invites you to consider the big “what-ifs” and create within the endless possibilities of our past, present, and future society which have not yet been enacted.
Think Harriet’s dreams of conducting the underground River Raid to free hundreds of enslaved individuals; the Combahee River Collective organizing to make sure Black queer women were liberated from the major interlocking systems of oppressions; Cooperative Jackson’s framework for a sustainable and cooperative economic future for the Black community in Jackson, Mississippi. Each of these individuals used the power of speculation to ask what if and imagine a reality in which Black liberation was a possibility within their world.
Following in the tradition of the aforementioned activists and speculative artists such as Octavia Butler, Sun Ra, Kara Walker, Susan Lori Parks, Andre 3000, Claudia Rankine, Morgan Parker, Alice Coltrane, and Nalo Hopkinson among so many more, Black Light Arts Collective invites you to submit your writing, music, and visual artwork to our second issue of The BLAC Imaginarim Zine: BLAC Speculation.
The BLAC Imaginarium Zine aligns itself with the mission of Black Light Arts Collective in that we look for ideas, stories, and expressions of Black imagination. The BLAC Zine is a space for stories, art, and performance that replenish agency to black voices. We reject racism, violence, ableism, genderism, sexism, bigotry, and white supremacy. We too reject stories and energy that cause harm to marginalized people groups. We invite artists from the Black diaspora to submit.
Submitting
The BLAC Imaginarium Zine welcomes submissions of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, visual arts, and plays. The submission period for this zine is open now to September 19th, 2021. Please submit your work at any time during our reading period. Submissions outside this reading period will remain unread.
Prose submissions, submit one (1) short story or one (1) self-contained novel excerpt or (1) creative non/fiction piece of no more than 5,000 words in one single file in .pdf format.
Poetry submissions, submit up to three poems totaling no more than 6 pages in one single file in .pdf format.
Visual Art submissions, (photography, mixed-media, painting, sculpture, installation, printmaking, graphic narratives, and other 2D work) please submit up to 5 images as JPEG or PNG format.
Play submissions, please submit a one act play under 30 pages with play history, bio and a complete list of characters in .pdf format.
Please submit your work by clicking the button below. Name your work with your name and genre. Please also include a brief bio and/or artist statement.
Example of file name: Octavia Butler.Fiction
Lastly, The BLAC Imaginarium Zine is looking for previously unpublished work. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable as long as they are indicated as such. Authors must immediately notify the editors if said work has been selected for publication in another periodical, either in print or online.
We look forward to reviewing your work.