Revisiting WOMAN: AN ISSUE, 50 Years Later.
“Revisiting WOMAN: AN ISSUE” will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of a groundbreaking double issue of the Massachusetts Review (MR), while also reexamining the multifaceted conceptions of womanhood in the twenty-first century. The issue will include literary prose and poetry from women writers around the world, including intersex and trans women and transfeminine writers. This issue will represent an effort to go beyond the definition of “woman” as framed by the ideologies of the 1970s, to explore and examine new possibilities and horizons for feminist literatures today.
“Revisiting WOMAN: AN ISSUE” will honor the 50th anniversary of the publication of “WOMAN: AN ISSUE”, which published prose, poetry and visual art by women globally, including such luminaries as Angela Davis, Anaïs Nin, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, and Tina Modotti. The special issue will honor that legacy while also reexamining the question of womanhood through a gender-expansive and trans-inclusive lens. “Revisiting WOMAN: AN ISSUE” a special MR issue, asks for your personal essays, stories, interviews, and poems about womanhood as it relates to modern times.
Your essays, stories, and/or poems might (but do not have to) engage these questions:
How has “woman” evolved in recent months, years, decades, or centuries and across your own personal, familiar spaces?
What demands have state control/power claimed on the contemporary woman? What has been the impact?
How have unsung women created alternative frameworks of leadership and visions of change?
How does modern-day womanhood address state/power? What are its limitations? Where can it be more expansive?
How have women responded to state regulation and management of bodies, or of biopower more generally, including but not limited to issues of sexuality, reproductive justice, population growth, and movement?
How is the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies still prevalent today? What were its limitations? How have modern-day feminists expanded its original agenda?
What feminisms best address our current planetary crises?
Submissions should be no more than 7,000 words for prose, or up to 6 poems for poetry. We are interested in submissions from trans women, gender queer folx, poverty-born women, incarcerated women, justice-involved women, system-impacted women, disabled women, neurodivergent women, BIPOC women, colonized women, women living on the frontlines of climate crisis, and others. Published writers will receive $200 upon publication.
Please send work as a Word or PDF attachment to themassreview@gmail.com and indicate the special issue and genre in the subject line (i.e. "WOMAN: Fiction"). If online submission is not possible, please mail work to The Massachusetts Review, Photo Lab 309, UMass, Amherst, MA 01003. DEADLINE TO SUBMIT WORK IS JUNE 1ST. WE DO NOT ACCEPT SUBMISSIONS OF PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED WORK.
