Narrative Magazine is looking for first-person fiction or nonfiction, 8,000 words or less. The magazine hopes “find the most necessary, most intimate, most personal stories made universal.”

Entries will be accepted through the end of July. Do it! I know you have a first-person story, so send it already. First prize is $3,000. All entrants get a six-month subscription.
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“Machine of Death,” an upcoming anthology of short stories, is looking for submissions. The book will feature stories that, well, sound very fun to write.

“The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. It didn’t give you the date and it didn’t give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words “DROWNED” or “CANCER” or “OLD AGE” or “CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN”. It let people know how they were going to die.“

In the world described, how would you live your life and what would the implications of such a machine be? The editors say they aren’t looking for gimmicky, ironic-twist kind of stories. So don’t throw all the elements of good story-writing out the window for the sake of a cheap gag (Oh, the machine said I would die by a malfunction of a Machine of Death. Aaaaaarg! Now I am dead, etc.).

The deadline is March 31.

-Marcia

Bitch magazine is looking for pieces about “Green.”

When I saw the word “Green,” I first thought of naive and inexperienced. What comes to mind for you? It would be an interesting exercise to take one word like this and turn it into an idea.

Words are powerful beyond their literal meaning, so I think there are a lot of ideas that could come from riffing on a single word. Some of you may want to give it a shot, whether for this publication or as a writing exercise on your own.

The magazine calls itself “the feminist response to pop culture.” As an aside, there’s a good example of a word with all sorts of action going on beyond its literal meaning.

Here’s the call for submissions:

Green: It’s environmental. It’s jealous. It’s money. It’s even, sometimes, a little nauseated. You can see the possibilities, right? Potential pieces might include an exploration of intentional communities; the trope of jealousy between women in romance novels; the feminization of the environmental movement; an in-depth look at pop culture’s female financial gurus; and gender and the stoner comedy. Pitch deadline: June 1, 2006