May 13, 2010: Special Show: Call For Submissions

This show featured all these calls for submissions:

1. Art against Incarceration: Graphic Responses to the Prison Industrial Complex

This art show and fundraiser for Project NIA will encourage people to learn about the nature and impact of the Prison Industrial Complex. While public education is our priority with this art show, Project NIA will also use the art as a way to fundraise to support our programs and work. We conceptualize art as inherently political and are committed to utilizing art as a tool toward eliminating oppression.

If you make art, photography, graphic design, silkscreens or things like 'em, and you are interested in supporting restorative and transformative justice and breaking down the prison-industrial complex, here's an opportunity for you to help out a fantastic new organization in Chicago (and get your work shown)!

Project NIA (www.project-nia.org) is seeking donations of original poster designs that make a statement about the prison-industrial complex, school policing and zero tolerance policies, or the injustice and racism of the juvenile legal system. Please be as clear or as abstract as you want; use statistics and slogans, images and imagination, or whatever works.

Full-color designs should be 11"x17" and ideally already matted on white board (we can help with this). Digital submissions are okay but we'd prefer physical originals or prints--please email about the details. Silk-screen and other creative media encouraged. We will also accept 18x24 posters, and potentially other dimensions if you let us know.
Due to Project NIA by May 31, 2010
Email lewispants@gmail.com if you plan to submit so that we can arrange mailing or pick-up of your donation.

All accepted poster art will be displayed for 6 weeks in Fall 2010 and available for sale or auction, first at Neighbors United in New Possibilities and then at the Common Cup Cafe in Rogers Park. One or two of our favorite posters will be selected for mass reproduction. Your donations will help us hugely as we will use them both to raise money for the project and to spread awareness about the prison-industrial complex and its effects in people's lives. All the proceeds will go directly to covering the unjust government fees for youth who come through our Juvenile Justice Expungement Clinic seeking assistance with clearing criminal records.

Project NIA helps communities develop support networks for youth who are at risk of or have already been impacted by the juvenile justice system. Through participatory action research, community engagement, education, and capacity-building, Project NIA facilitates the creation of community-focused responses to youth violence and crime. See www.project-nia.org for more information.

Thank you so much for your time and please feel free to contact me with any questions.

-Lewis Wallace
Volunteer Coordinator, Project NIA
lewispants@gmail.com

2. Out of the Closet and Into the Street:
Posters of LGBTQ Struggles & Celebrations

July 3 – September 26, 2010

Opening Reception: July 3, 5-8 pm

at the ONE Archives Gallery & Museum
626 N. Robertson Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90069
(entrance on El Tovar)

Gallery Hours:
Friday: 4:30-8:30
Saturday & Sunday: 1-5

Despite decades of affirmation and positive role models engendered by the LGBTQ liberation movements, discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation continues. Hospitals still refuse to allow lesbians and gays to be with their sick or dying partners by restricting visitation to “family” only. Same-sex couples are denied equal inheritance rights, pensions and health-care benefits, and lesbian and gay parents are often denied custody of their children. Violent attacks and homicides against members of the LGBTQ community continue and recent legal gains are tentative and subject to reversal—Californian’s right to marriage equality was taken away; open lesbians and gays continue to be excluded from the military; and as recently as February 2010, the Governor of Virginia signed an executive order deliberately removing gays and lesbians as a protected class in state-wide hiring procedures.

For more than 40 years, political posters have been one of the primary art forms to challenge the oppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer individuals and communities. Whether institutionalized through legislation or conducted culturally through physical violence or psychological negativity, this exhibition focuses on homophobia as a violation of human rights and uses the power of graphics to expose injustice, defend rights and celebrate victories.

For more information contact CSPG
323.653.4662 or cspg@politicalgraphics


3. The new issue of Absent Cause zine will focus on surviving. Some possible topics are:

* Your personal story of survival
* The repercussions of surviving emotional, physical and sexual abuse
* Surviving under a classist, anti-poor, racist, sexist, anti-queer and fat-phobic system
* Sex work and survival
* What should be the role of social-justice activists and organizations in personal survival issues?
* Coping methods, good or bad – alcohol and drugs, food, sexual acting out, relationship merry-go-rounds, art and writing, isolation, fashion/style, therapy — and their consequences


Absent Cause welcomes submissions of essays, poetry, artwork, photography, comix, etc. Contributions from people of color, wimmin and queer people are especially welcome!


The deadline for submissions is Friday, May 28, 2010. Send your submissions to redguard@gmail.com


To check out previous issues, contact me or visit http://redguard.etsy.com

4. [[ SUBMIT TO UPPING THE ANTI ]]]



Pitches due June 13, 2010; first draft due July 20, 2010



*WHO WE ARE*

UPPING THE ANTI: A JOURNAL OF THEORY AND ACTION
is a radical journal published twice a year by a pan-Canadian
collective of activists and organizers. We are dedicated to publishing
radical theory and analysis about struggles against capitalism,
imperialism, and all forms of oppression.

In our first ten issues, we've published articles by and interviews

with renowned activists and intellectuals, including Aijaz Ahmad,
Himani Bannerji, Grace Lee Boggs, Ward Churchill, Michael Hardt,

John Holloway, Sunera Thobani, Andrea Smith, and many more.


We have covered a wide variety of topics including Palestine solidarity

activism, trans politics and anti-capitalism, anti-war activism, Indigenous

solidarity, contemporary feminist organizing, and activist burnout.

In every issue, activists and organizers reflect on the state of
contemporary organizing in Canada and beyond. We publish theoretical
and critical articles, interviews and roundtables. UPPING THE ANTI
also includes a book review section where activists assess new writing
on the Left.


*CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS*

We are currently looking for story ideas for ISSUE ELEVEN, which will
be released in OCTOBER of 2010. If you have an idea for a story you

would like to see published in our journal, please send us a one page pitch

by Sunday, June 13, 2010. In addition to the pitch, please submit a short

writing sample (max 1,000 words).

In your pitch, please provide a brief description of the topic of your
investigation, your main questions, an account of how you will address
these questions, as well as a brief biographical note.

Before submitting a pitch, we encourage you to read back issues in
order to familiarize yourself with the kind of writing that we
publish. We also encourage you to have a look at the UPPING THE ANTI
writer's guide, which can be downloaded at http://uppingtheanti.org.

Pitches should be for original stories that have not been submitted or

published elsewhere. Please do not send us a pitch that you have
simultaneously sent to another publication.

Although we will consider all pitches, we are especially interested in
stories about the current economic crisis, contemporary labour organizing,

feminism and women's struggles, dis/ability, international solidarity work,

mobilization strategies, marxism and anarchism in the 21st Century, activist

interventions in art and culture, and struggles around questions of sex and

sexuality.

We will review your pitch and provide you with feedback. After a pitch
has been approved, writers are expected to submit their story by deadline.

Deadline for first drafts for ISSUE ELEVEN is July 20, 2010.


Please submit all pitches and direct all queries to uppingtheanti@gmail.com



*CHECK OUT ISSUE TEN!*



Our next issue will be available in May 2010. Content will include AK

Thompson on Avatar and the co-option of capitalism, Tom Keefer on

Marxism and Indigenous struggles, Dimitris Dalakoglou and Antonis

Vradis on the spatial legacies of the Athens uprising.



The issue will also feature interviews with Andrea Smith on building

unlikely alliances, Patrick Bond on climate justice and anti-capitalism,

Nandita Sharma and Jessica Yee on sex work, migration and anti-trafficking,

and roundtables on radical media, ex-cops resisting police, and student

occupations in the US.



We need your support to keep Upping the Anti running. Pick up the latest

issue, and check out our online subscription program.




For more information about UPPING THE ANTI, visit http://uppingtheanti.org

5. Venus in Scorpio : A Poetry Zine

Now accepting submissions for summer 2010 debut edition.

Venus in Scorpio is a 24 page (give or take a few pgs.,
depending on the # and length of included poems) print literary zine out
of Hollywood Ca. We are now accepting original poems, drawings and
photos for our first issue.

We can’t pay $$, but if your work is published you’ll get 2 free copies of the zine.

We love edgy, rock ‘n’ roll, Bukowski, & beat inspired poems, but we’re open to
all types of poetry except religious, political or sentimental greeting
card verse. Erotic (not pornographic) poetry most welcome.

The submission deadline is June 1, 2010. First issue slated for release on July 15th, 2010.


E-mail poems (in Word) and jpegs of photos and drawings to Jade at
vscorpiozine@gmail.com. Include a short bio, with or without photo.

You can send snail mail contributions to:

Venus in Scorpio Poetry Zine
Jade Blackmore, Editor
1626 N. Wilcox Ave, #113
Hollywood, CA 90028

Include SASE (self addressed, stamped envelope) with snail mail subs.

I'll notify potential contributors upon receipt of submission, and contact writers whose work will be included by June 30th.

Please note-I haven't created a website for the zine yet, but check out my website jadeblackmore.com to find out about my background. Many of my poems were published in the 1990s in zines like Flower, AlphaBeat Soup, Lucid Moon, Sink Full of Dishes, Shockbox and Thirteen. My cousin and I put out a zine called Untitled in Chicago in 1994.

6. The Toronto Zine Fair is always looking for Submissions! Check out: http://torontozinelibrary.blogspot.com/

7. OCAD Zine Library is also always looking for submissions: Check out: http://zinesforlunch.blogspot.com/

In this episode of Things that people make, I also read this from the Toronto Women's Bookstore website (http://www.womensbookstore.com/)
Dear TWB community,

We know you have been waiting to hear the latest update, and we finally have something to tell you - it has been a challenging process, but it looks like we have found a new owner for TWB! There are still some logistics & legalities to be worked out so unfortunately we can't give out much concrete information yet, but we can tell you that she is someone who has worked at the store in the past and intends to carry it on in the same tradition. We are expecting the transition to happen for June 1st, and we will let you know as soon as the details are confirmed.

Many of you have asked us how you can help and we have several projects in mind for late May which we will be asking for assistance with, but what we need most is for you to keep shopping at TWB and making donations to help us through this last month. There will be a lot of work and also hidden costs associated with winding down the non-profit business and transitioning to a new model, and we need your continued support in order to meet all of our ethical obligations and give the new TWB owner the best chance of success.

And speaking of shopping, on Saturday, May 22nd we will be having a store-wide sale with 10% off regular stock, lots of discounted books and cds, food and live performances! More info TBA soon.

We want to thank you all for loving TWB so much and helping us through this year. As always, we couldn't have done it without you!

The TWB Staff & Board

www.womensbookstore.com

And I also talked about the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair!
(http://www.anarchistbookfair.ca/)