Fiction
We're looking for narrative and quasi-narrative work that creates its own logic. We'd like to see narrative taken apart and then reassembled into something almost, but not quite, what it was before. If the story gets sort of broken in the process, that's okay with us. Werewolves and the like are also okay with us, but not required. We prefer stories that make us feel alive over stories that make us feel dead. Kafka says fiction should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us. He is likely correct with regard to fiction published on the European continent; here in the Americas, we prefer to think of fiction as an ice-twibill for carving frozen-sea igloos under the surface of the frozen sea. There are pelicans down there, making delicious Erdbeer Käsekuchen Eis. They speak, but only in verse.
Please do not send us verse.
We encourage simultaneous submissions; just let us know if someone else is publishing you in a speedier fashion. Only one story at a time please. The total word count of an issue is generally about 20,000, so if you send us something longer than that we will have difficulty publishing it; aside from that restriction, we're open to work of any length. We will pay for stories we publish, though it won't be much. We buy First North American Serial Rights. Response time should be less than two months.
Editor Proposals
We invite you to participate in an experiment.
We want to entrust several pairs of strangers with editing Birkensnake 6. Strangers to each other. We do not yet know how many pairs. Each pair will assemble its own version of Birkensnake 6, and we, sometimes editors but in this case merely publishers, will publish all of these versions, together and individually, as Birkensnake 6.
There may be some confusion among readers as various disparate texts present themselves simultaneously as Birkensnake 6. This is fine with us. Desirable, in fact.
If you are interested in co-editing a version of Birkensnake 6 with a stranger, you should tell us before July 15, 2012. On July 15 we will choose some number of participants and put them in pairs. One year later, on July 15, 2013, we will collect the texts of Birkensnake 6.
Why are we performing this experiment?
We are interested in what happens when two people, especially two strangers, work together as curators of art. Working together as artists is one thing, but working together as curators is different. Do the two stranger-partners create a different aesthetic space than either would create alone? Does this space simply represent an intersection of tastes, or is there a more complex interaction? Are there aesthetic spaces that can only be reached by pairs of curators, and never by individuals? Are there aesthetic spaces that can only be reached by pairs of curators who are also strangers?
What will happen to the stranger-partners themselves? Once they have curated art together, will they ever be the same again?
More details are available on our website.
If you would like to co-edit Birkensnake 6 with a stranger, please write us a note about who you are, why this project interests you, and what sort of Birkensnake you think you might like to put together. You do not have to write some sort of formal essay. We do not have a rubric. We just want to know what you are thinking. Also mention where you live, because we might try to arrange pairs of editors who live near each other and can meet face to face.
We do not know how many participants we will accept. We also do not know what we will be looking for. Will we prefer people who want to publish something like what we already publish, or people who want to publish something different? We don’t know. Will we prefer experience or inexperience, age or youth, man or woman, wolf or bear? We don’t know. Since this project is about pairs of editors, rather than individuals, some of our decisions may depend on who else volunteers, and whether we think there is a good fit.
You may not volunteer as a pair, or specify some other volunteer you would like to work with.
We expect that most interest will come from writers, but we also welcome non-writers. We welcome genre writers (any genre). We welcome poets, provided they understand that they must not publish verse. If you are someone we know, or a past contributor, or a famous person, we welcome you too, even though we have not solicited you personally; we are soliciting nobody, the whole project being, in many ways, harebrained.
We will respond to everybody, yes or no, on July 15, 2012. We will also assign partners on that date.