In 2017, Orford Parish Books will be releasing WOULD BUT TIME AWAIT: AN ANTHOLOGY OF NEW ENGLAND FOLK HORROR (edited by s.j. bagley, editor [and interrogator] of THINKING HORROR: A JOURNAL OF HORROR PHILOSOPHY.)

Please read the guidelines before submitting a query and direct all queries to heksenhaus@gmail.com with the subject header ‘FOLK HORROR QUERY.’

(All stories sent without a prior query will be deleted, unread.)

WHAT WE DEFINE AS FOLK HORROR AND WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR.

For the purposes of this project, we are defining folk horror as horror literature in which the present (which can be a year/decade of the author’s choosing) collides with the history, folklore, traditions, and psychogeography of a region and where that collision has a significant impact on the present (as defined in the work.)

We are looking for work that uses the physical, historical, and social landscapes of New England as a focal point (rather than a story that could be set anywhere else but just happens to be set in New England.)

There is a long and rich history of horrific and strange folklore in New England but that doesn’t mean a writer needs to restrict themselves to it and writers are perfectly welcome to invent their own folklore, traditions, and fictional New England locations.

We should also stress that, while Folk Horror has largely been a rural construct, we by no means consider a rural location to be necessary to any working definition of the term.

A few examples of what we consider Folk Horror in literature:

Stephen King- ‘Pet Sematary.’

Stephen King- ‘Bag of Bones.’

Peter Straub- ‘Ghost Story.’

Peter Straub- ‘Floating Dragon.’

Toni Morrison- ‘Beloved.’

H.P. Lovecraft- ‘The Picture In The House.’

M.R. James- ‘View From a Hill.’

John Farris- ‘All Heads Turn When The Hunt Goes By.’

T.E.D. Klein- ‘The Ceremonies.’

Gary McMahon- ‘All Your Gods Are Dead.’

Thomas Ligotti- ‘The Last Feast Of Harlequin.’

Michael Mcdowell- ‘Blackwater.’

Thomas Tryon- ‘Harvest Home.’

Adam Nevill- ‘The Ritual.’

Adam Nevill- ‘Last Days.’

Shirley Jackson- ‘The Lottery.’

Alain Mabanckou- ‘African Psycho.’

Shirley Jackson- ‘The Summer People.’

Matthew M. Bartlett- ‘Gateways To Abomination.’

Arthur Machen- ‘The White People.’

Flannery O’Connor- ‘A Good Man Is Hard To Find.’

Marjorie Bowen- ‘What Remained Behind.’

Chinua Achebe- ‘Things Fall Apart.’

Gemma Files- ‘We Will All Go Down Together.’

Susan Cooper- ‘The Dark Is Rising.’

Mary Buchanan- ‘The Dark Backward.’

Kingsley Amis- ‘The Green Man.’

Ray Bradbury- ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes.’

Josephine Poole- ‘Moon Eyes.’

Josephine Poole- ‘Billy Buck.’

Daniel Mills- ‘Revenants.’

Clive Barker- ‘In The Hills, The Cities.’

Clive Barker- ‘The Forbidden.’

WHO CAN SUBMIT.

We are open to submissions from writers from every global region and every walk of life and, while each story needs to focus (in some manner) on the geographic region of New England (which consists of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont) we certainly don’t require that every author needs to be from that region.

We expect and encourage diversity in regard to the voices involved in this project.

DEADLINES AND SCHEDULE.

Submissions will be open until April 2017, at which point we will no longer be accepting submissions or queries.

Publication date is summer 2017 (with a more firm date to come.)

PAYMENT.

We will be paying a flat rate of $75USD upon acceptance for first rights in print and digital.

STORY CRITERIA.

Length: 2,000-10,000 words.

Each story MUST either be set in New England or contain elements of New England folklore and history.

Each story MUST be folk horror (which we fully and happily acknowledge as being a broad and diverse term but we are defining as stated above.)

No reprints.

No simultaneous submissions.

SOME THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND BEFORE SUBMITTING:

New England is an ethnically diverse region of the United States with a long (and often sordid) history so please keep the contemporary effects of that history in mind when submitting and avoid work that portrays the indigenous people and tribes of New England in a racist, bigoted, or stereotypical sense and please avoid stereotypes of the poor, and economically disenfranchised, all races, genders, sexes, sexualities, (dis)abilities, faiths, and anything that targets marginalized people.

In general, we are looking to avoid depictions of sexual violence (unless written with extreme care, an actual point beyond the simple violence of it, and, above all, empathy toward victims of sexual violence.)

https://orfordparishbooks.com/2016/06/21/call-for-submissions-for-new-england-folk-horror-anthology/

TRANSNATIONAL SCIENCE FICTION FILM AND MEDIA

Like the Western, noir, and musical, the science fiction film occupies a well-defined niche of cinema and media studies, complete with its own catalogue of specialized theory and criticism (Calvin 2014). Science fiction is also a category of film that has come to embody an era and its conditions. As Jim Kitses observed in the introduction to The Western Reader (1998), “an era of radical capitalism with its relentless global commodification, downsized status of the individual, and increasingly technological, mediated world of experience, has solidly positioned science fiction and neo-noir as the post-modern genres of choice, with their hybrid, the formidable “tech-noir” (Terminator, Blade Runner, Alien), logically the post-modern genre par excellence” (16).

Perhaps on account of this positioning of science fiction film and especially its noir correlate, the study of science fiction film (see for example Cornea 2007; Kuhn 1990, 1999; Sobchack 1997; Telotte 1995, 2001) has rivaled the study of its prose form and has dominated studies of what Paweł Frelik (2016) recently called the “ocularies of science fiction,” that is, the genre’s visual megatext. While scholars and critics alike have turned their attention to issues such as literal and metaphorical space (Kuhn 1999), the problems of technology (Telotte 1995), the politics of alternative futures (Booker 2006), and even race (Nama 2008) in monograph-length works, research on science fiction films focuses overwhelmingly on American, and to a lesser extent European, films—their histories, contexts, audiences, and politics.

Meeting the wider turn in cinema and media studies head on, a handful of essays and a new collection (Feeley and Wells 2015) have begun to conceive of science fiction film as a transnational genre, a global or world phenomenon. Challenging the idea that science fiction is a decidedly Western or even a particularly American film genre, this panel seeks papers that ask what the study of science fiction film and related (audio)visual media can add to the increasingly complex and interrelated discussions of transnational film production, circulation, and reception; of transnational film as a category; and of competing categories (e.g. “world,” “global”) for understanding film and (audio)visual media as they move across national, cultural, and linguistic boundaries.

In other words, what does it mean to think of science fiction film transnationally? Is there such a thing as (the) transitional science fiction film? What are its histories, forms, politics, audiences, etc.? Although emphasizing film as the medium of study and conceiving of science fiction in broad terms as a visual megatext—a set of generically interrelated and recognizable visual tropes (see Broderick 1995 for an early discussion of megatext as frame for science fiction narratives)—the panel also hopes to encourage the exploration of media beyond film, to consider, for example, science fiction television, comics, and video games in conversation with discourses on film, science fiction, and the transnational, world, or global.

Papers might consider, but are certainly not limited to, the following guiding topics:

• Transnational SF and global crises/catastrophes, especially environmental and geopolitical
• Adaptations of texts across national, cultural, linguistic, and medium boundaries, especially with consideration of shifting political, aesthetic, and generic concerns
  • e.g. Snowpiercer (2013), from Jacques Lob’s French Le Transperceniegegraphic novel to Bong Joon-ho’s English-language, global-cast South Korean dystopian film, in which the only survivors are a black boy and a Korean woman.
• Transnational science fiction films and audiences, and the circulation of science fiction film out of, into, and outside the U.S. and Europe
• Transnational blockbusters and global audiences
  • e.g. Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens as global phenomenon/text
• Transnational (or world or global) SF film production and distribution (e.g. art/indie vs. blockbuster)
• The (in)stability of “science fiction” as a genre across national, cultural, linguistic, and medium boundaries
• Popular subgenres of transnational science fiction media
• Troubling the terms “world,” “global,” and “transnational” as they relate to “science fiction” (itself slippery) film and other media
• Transnational science fiction beyond film: television, comics, video games
  • e.g. the “kaiju” and “mecha” genres of Japanese manga as transnationally and transmedially circulated subgenres of SF; the manga boom in 1990s America and the subsequent, related anime boom on U.S. television; massive popularity, aesthetics, and generic concerns of SF games

Proposals should include a 250-300 word abstract and a brief bio. Please send all materials to Sean A. Guynes at guynesse@msu.edu by August 10, 2016.  Decisions will be made by August 15 and the panel proposal will be submitted by August 31.

If you are interested in being a respondent, please notify Sean A. Guynes and include a brief bio and a CV (keep in mind the new SCMS policy that now limits members to one role at the conference).