#writing #writer #writers #writingCommunity
I thought maybe someone would want to be a part of this. It's a cut-n-paste from an email and lost the links, but you could just go to the Vagina Museum's site if interested.
Call for Submissions
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Lip Service invites visual, fiction, and non-fiction submissions for Issue
#7 – On Ageing
Lip Service is a quarterly publication by the Vagina Museum in the style of old school community magazines. In this A5 zine, the content ranges from expanded exhibition content and other longform commentary and cultural critique, to photography and letters. The hope is that it serves as a forum for community engagement and knowledge exchange.
As a creative, promotional and educational outlet, Lip Service also serves as another channel by which the Vagina Museum might share our work with the public. Our work being:
📢 Spreading knowledge and raising awareness of the gynaecological anatomy and health
🗣️ Giving confidence to people to talk about issues surrounding the gynaecological anatomy
🚫 Erasing the stigma around the body and gynaecological anatomy
🏳️🌈 Acting as a forum for feminism, women’s rights, the LGBT+ community and the intersex community
🔥 Challenging heteronormative and cisnormative behaviour
✊🏽 Promoting intersectional, feminist and trans-inclusive values
We are accepting submissions for Letters, Commentary, Fiction, Visuals as well as questions for Ms Fallopia.
Commentary, fiction, visual and question submissions should respond to, engage with, or in some sense tackle the theme of On Ageing. Ageing, although simply the result of passing time, is a phenomenon mired in controversy. From demographic fears about ageing populations to uptake in so-called ‘preventative’ cosmetic procedures, ageing causes all manner of anxieties on an individual as well as population level. This is not only true of ageing in the later stages of life, but at all stages of development. Cultures and societies all over the world track the passing of time in different ways, commemorating milestones at different occasions. A child’s first laugh, menarche, a voice breaking, going off to university or landing your first job, the first time it hurts to sit on the floor, menopause, that red Ferrari purchase, the passing down of an heirloom or a first dance. Some, but not all, of these milestones are marked in the body and the body is where so much of the trepidation around ageing lives.
We’re interested, then, in explorations of what ageing, growing up or growing old means. What does it mean to ‘get old’? Or to age gracefully? Who gets to decide? How are ideas about gender, about disability, sexuality, aesthetics, and power entangled in getting older? How is ageing differently understood, experienced, thought about around the world? We invite submissions, both written and visual, exploring these ideas.
The zine is a collaborative, mixed media project so we encourage not only written submissions, but visual submissions also.
For a full description of the sections see here.
Submission Guidelines
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Deadline: 5pm on Friday 11th September 2026
How to Send Us Your Work: Please email your work to lipservice@vaginamuseum.co.uk, clearly indicating the section you’re submitting for in the subject line. Your work must be complete and in one of the following file forms: .doc, .docx, .pdf, .txt, .jpeg, .png.
Formatting Your Work: All written submissions should be in 12-point type, with at least one-inch margins, and sequentially numbered pages. Fiction and nonfiction should be double-spaced. Poetry can be formatted as preferred. The author’s name and email address should be typed at the top of the first page. Contributors are asked to include a brief biographical note with their submissions.
Simultaneous Submissions: We accept simultaneous submissions.
Payment to Authors: We cannot pay contributors at this time.
Word Count Guidelines:
Letters must be under 300 words. A letter can be anything from a five word response to a letter in a previous issue to a short review of the Museum. Letters need not adhere to the theme of the issue.
Commentary works between 500 words and 1,200 words can include creative non-fiction, reviews, commentary, analyses, Op-Eds and more.
Fiction submissions may take two forms: flash fiction or poetry. Flash fiction submissions should be complete works no more than 500 words in length. Poetry submissions should be no longer than two A5 pages.
Questions for Ms Fallopia should be no longer than 100 words.
Visual submissions should come with a summary no more than 250 words in length and a description suitable for alt text.
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Before submitting, please consult the full submission guidelines here and the full editorial guidelines here.
Hellion succubish. Imperfectly contained ball of curiosity, sex, and rage. Equal parts fiction, myth, and reality. Real worlds adventurer, smut writer, and clap back princess. Witch, bitch, and sometimes switch. U can call me Elle, may or may not be short for Hellion. */ Rated T for Trash /*
