Contribute to Blunderbuss!
Blunderbuss is an urban creature. Our contributors hail from all over the country, but ultimately we are a proud product of New York City. As such, we’ve been giving a lot of thought to how those of us in progressive cities can push back against the rise of right-wing authoritarianism. Short of decamping to help organize the Rust Belt (and all praise to the folks going that route), what can we do?
Inspired by work from thinkers like David Harvey and organizations like Barcelona en Comú, we believe that cities have a key role to play in the fight ahead. Our municipal governments can be mobilized to protect the vulnerable. Our numbers can be leveraged for protest. Our close proximity to one another can foster solidarity across communities. Cities have long been hothouses of social ferment, and the coming era is going require us to turn up the temperature.
So with a nod to Harvey’s book of the same name, we are excited to announce that the theme of our second print issue will be “Rebel Cities.” We welcome the submission of essays, short stories, poetry, art, comics, and other aesthetic shrapnel that explore the potential for urban resistance in our current era of hate & authoritarianism. We want work that addresses questions like: What opportunities for political action do cities offer us? What are the limitations of urban activism? What good work is already being done, and what remains to be done? What is it like to experience resistance in urban space? What tensions exist in “city values,” say, between self-expression and community? How do we reach across class and racial boundaries? How can we escape this historical moment with our values intact?
Submissions will be considered for publication in both the print and online version of Blunderbuss. Our tastes are varied–check out our website to get a sense of who we are–but we do prefer work that’s broadly comprehensible and light on the jargon.
For fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and shrapnel: Please submit via our Submittable page.
For visual art, comics, sound art, and other non-text work: Submit your work directly to Arts.BlunderbussMag@gmail.com. Please include a brief artist’s statement (150–300 words) and a link to your portfolio. Sorry, but we’re unable to accept email attachments. There are many good, free online services (Flickr, Imgur, Soundcloud, or even a Facebook album) that will host your images or sounds.
Submissions will remain open through March 3.
Thanks to the generosity of our readers, Blunderbuss is able to offer a modest stipend to contributors upon publication.
We try to be reasonably timely in our replies, but we can’t guarantee a specific time frame, at least not until an angel investor swoops in and gives us the means to do Blunderbuss full-time.
