MY BODY, MY HEALTH: WOMEN’S STORIES
Call for essay, short fiction and poetry submissions
for an edited volume on women and health
Editors: Kit-Bacon Gressitt and Jodie Lawston, PhD
DESCRIPTION
Women’s health became a key issue for the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s as women began to explore every aspect of themselves: their traditional roles, their expanding opportunities, their bodies, even their genitalia. And health continues to be an issue of keen interest for feminists, as women struggle for proper diagnoses; advocate for their ill children, parents, partners and themselves; address males attempting to control their health (as exemplified in the recent congressional hearings on birth control); and demand clinical trials that test new drugs on women, not just men.
THE WAY WE WERE
Yet few women’s stories about their experiences with health issues are shared beyond workplace women’s rooms, grocery store checkout lines and kitchen tables. Sorrowful and infuriating, hilarious and humiliating, our stories must be told, because women’s health concerns have been denied, ignored, misdiagnosed, and belittled. Today, as women are taking back control of their health and wresting their bodies away from the medicalization of what used to be natural, our stories — of successes and failures — will help others do the same.
This anthology will serve as a soapbox for women of all sexualities, races, classes, ages, and abilities, from which to tell their tales of health and illness, recovery and degeneration, birthing and dying. It is a soft shoulder and a bullhorn, a cup of chamomile tea and a concoction that will knock your socks off. We hope you have a feminist story or two you want to share with us in the form of an essay, short fiction piece, or poem. We are particularly interested in creative approaches to the overall theme of women and health.
We will be submitting the book proposal concurrent with editing the anthology.
SUGGESTED TOPICS OF INTEREST — AS THEY RELATE TO WOMEN’S HEALTH
- Aging, death and dying
- Discrimination and violence against women
- Environmental health
- Alternative care, self care and caregiving
- Historical perspectives
- Identities, relationships and sexuality
- Illness and disease
- Intersections of women and health
- Media influences on women’s health
- Medical systems
- Healthcare insurance
- Nutrition
- Public policy and politics
- Health activism
- Reproductive choice and health
- Addictions
- Women and sports
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Authors may submit one or two pieces to be considered for inclusion in the anthology. Essays and stories may be no more than 15 pages or about 4,000 words. Submissions must be made electronically. If you submit two pieces, please include them in ONE Microsoft Word document
PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING FORMATTING:
– Double-spaced
– Indent start of paragraphs to the first tab
– Make proper use of italics and quotation marks for titles.
– Include your full name, phone number, email address and street address on the first page of your manuscript, and your full name and page number on each subsequent page.
– Include the title of each piece in the body of the page, at the top of the piece.
– If you use references, please use MLA style. Information can be found here: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/. Please keep references to a minimum (no more than 3 – 5 per submission).
– Please do not use any other formatting.
Please attach your submission, in MSWord, to an email and send it to both: Jodie Lawston: jlawston@csusm.edu and Kit-Bacon Gressitt: kbgressitt@gmail.com
Questions? Email Kit-Bacon (kbgressitt@gmail.com) or Jodie (jlawston@csusm.edu).
EDITORS’ BIOS
Jodie M. Lawston is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at California State University San Marcos. She is the author of Sisters Outside: Radical Activists Working for Women Prisoners and co-editor of Razor Wire Women: Prisoners, Activists, Scholars, and Artists. Her other scholarly publications include articles in the anthologies (Re) Interpretations: The Shapes of Justice in Women’s Experience; Milestones for American Women: Our Defining Passages; Beyond Cages and Walls: Bridging Prison Abolition and Immigrant Justice Movements; and Women, Punishment, and Community Sanctions: Human Rights and Social Justice. She has peer-reviewed articles published in Gender & Society, Sociological Focus, Social Justice, Sage Open, and the National Women’s Studies Association Journal. She has edited several additional projects, including a special issue of the National Women’s Studies Association Journal entitled “Women and Criminal Justice: Policing, Prosecution, and Incarceration” (with Ashley Lucas), and with Martha Escobar a special issue of Social Justice entitled “Policing, Detention, Deportation, and Resistance: Situating Immigrant Justice and Carcerality in the 21st Century.” She was recently appointed to the editorial board of Gender & Society, and is currently co-editing a book with Mary Romero, entitled In Between the Shadows of Citizenship: Mixed Status Families.
Kit-Bacon Gressitt is a former editorial board member and political columnist for the San Diego North County Times. Her Pulitzer Prize-nominated commentary received first place awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association and the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She now writes book reviews for the newspaper, and her feminist commentary is published by the Ocean Beach Rag, the Progressive Post, San Diego Gay & Lesbian News and on her blog, excusemeimwriting.com. She is also founding editor of IG Living, a healthcare magazine for patients and providers; co-founder and editor of The Bridge, an erstwhile literary journal; and her work has been published in the 2006, 2011 and 2012 editions of the San Diego Poetry Annual.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
For inquiries: kbgressitt@gmail.com, jlawston@csusm.edu
For submissions: kbgressitt@gmail.com, jlawston@csusm.edu
This blog is no longer updated. Please instead visit Writers For Diversity for new opportunities for women/ LGBT writers and writers of color. Thank you.
