Submission Call: Memories of Love: A Literary Tribute to The Magnetic Fields and Stephin Merritt

Since 1991, Stephin Merritt and his band The Magnetic Fields have been putting out beautiful songs with sharp, insightful, funny, and bitter lyrics. Merritt is a prolific songwriter who's known for his love songs, the most popular Magnetic Fields album being the triple album 69 Love Songs, but has also written dark, Gothic music for Lemony Snicket and Neil Gaiman audiobooks, the songs for avant-garde interpretations of Chinese operas, and a quintuple album serving as an autobiography. The Magnetic Fields is even named for a French surrealist novel by Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault. With all that, and the literary references littered throughout Merritt's songs, a book of poems and prose inspired by his work seems like the next logical step. This is what Memories of Love is. With help of the new small press from the UK, Mongrel Press, I'm bringing this to the world.

What we want: We want prose, poetry, prose poetry, one act plays, experimental pieces, and writing that doesn't fit neatly into any category. We want it across any genre just as Merritt has written songs in nearly every genre. We want poems and stories about love, of course, but we also want stories and poems about vampires, wolfboys, and ghosts. We want quirky autobiographical fiction. We want stories about crimes of passion. We want surrealist inspired poems. We want your writing regardless of who you are. We want new and previously unpublished authors as well as established ones. We want LGBTQ+ writers and stories especially. Where would a Stephin Merritt tribute be without that? We want writers of all races from all over the world, even if English isn't your first language. Just make sure it's good and it's inspired by The Magnetic Fields or one of Stephin Merritt's many projects.

Word Count: Up to 3,000 words. Don't worry if it's a little bit over or if it's especially short. If Merritt proves one cliché, it's that brevity is the soul of wit.

Where to submit: memoriesofloveanthology@gmail.com. 

Please include a short note of what your piece is as well as an author bio in the body of the email. Please attach your piece as a .doc or .docx file. Please make the subject of your email “MEMORIES OF LOVE SUBMISSION: Title Piece – Your Name.”

Formatting: Please use standard formatting with Times New Roman font at 12 pt. If you're submitting an experimental work that uses unusual formatting or different fonts, please include a note of this in the body of your submission email.

Pay: 20 GBP/25 USD and a contributor's copy.

Deadline: August 1, 2019.

Save a secret for the moon but send your writing to us!

“The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing
It's full of charts and facts and figures and instructions for dancing
But I
I love it when you read to me
And you
You can read me anything “

- “The Book of Love” by The Magnetic Fields