Voiceworks Online is now open for submissions to 'Forgive/Forget'!
Theme: Forgive/Forget
If you never talk about it, it never happened, and what never happened can never hurt you. But it grows, a festering wound. It eats at you as you go about your day: buying groceries, sitting in class, watching TV, all the while biting down your nails until they’re little more than cuticle. Probably a sign you feel fine about things.
Maybe it’s better to forgive. You let go of your anger and relax into the comfort of the moral high ground. Your benevolence moves you to tears. Canonisation is imminent. But when your sainthood doesn’t arrive, you’re left nursing the same wound as before, and now you can’t even complain about it. It's all so difficult! So... unnecessary!
If you’ve suffered a hurt, large or small, what is there to do about it? No matter which choice you make—left, right; up, down; forgive, forget—you always end up right where you started.
Ernest Hemingway once wrote that you should ‘Never tell anyone anything ever. Never tell anyone anything again.’ Later editions of The Garden of Eden included the important caveat: ‘Except for Voiceworks Online.’
Blurb by Finnley Greet and Claudia Hunt.
Voiceworks Online Guidelines
Please make sure you read the following guidelines closely. If you’re unsure about any of the guidelines, please contact Voiceworks Online editor Aries Gacutan at editor@expressmedia.org.au.
We are only able to publish work by writers and artists who are under twenty-five at the time of submission. Please also keep in mind that because of our funding arrangements, we are only able to publish Australian writers and artists. However, international students are excepted from this.
Voiceworks only considers previously unpublished work (which includes Substack, Instagram, blogs and so on). We accept simultaneous submissions, but please let us know if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere.
If your submission is unsuccessful, we will notify you as soon as we can and then provide you with detailed feedback a little later. Feedback is written by a small group of volunteers and we receive a lot of submissions, so we appreciate your patience. If you think something’s gone wrong, or you haven’t heard from us three months after the submission deadline, please get in touch.
We are only able to publish writers and artists who are under the age of 25 (that is, 24 and under) at the time of submission.
We only accept work by people living in Australia (including international students) or by Australians living overseas.
We only consider previously unpublished work.
Please send no more than two submissions at a time.
Word limits are as follows (these may or may not be strictly applicable to experimental pieces; consider them guides):
Fiction and nonfiction: no more than 3000 words
Poetry: no more than 100 lines
Comics: no more than 10 pages
Deadlines
All submissions due Monday 21 September, 11:59PM AEST
Rates of pay
$120 per published piece
You’ll find further details by following the link below. Please read the information carefully and contact Voiceworks Online Editor Aries Gacutan if you have any questions or concerns. Alrighty then, it’s time to submit!