Burning House Press are excited to welcome DHIYANAH HASSAN as our DECEMBER 2019 guest editor! As of today DHIYANAH will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the full month of DECEMBER.

Submissions are open from today – 1st DECEMBER and will remain open until 24TH DECEMBER.

DHIYANAH‘S theme/s for the month are as follows

LABYRINTH

 

 

“Why should I stop, why?

 

Birds have gone to seek their blue way.

The horizon is horizontal,

movement vertical – a gushing geyser.

Bright stars spin as far as the eye can see.”-

from One Voice Remains by Forugh Farrokhzad, translated by Sholeh Wolpé

For December, BHP invites art and words that speak to the madness and mystique of the maze, the quest, the journey.

Do you accept the labyrinth’s call boldly or do you hesitate at its doorway, a silent shiver sending signals into the stars? What keeps you going, what rises you up again and again after each dead end? How do you hold your own alchemy, your backwards and forwards in the maze – how do you draw or cut through the clews (clues), break the binaries, throw caution to the wind, and give yourself up to an eternal spin?

Do you heed the difference between walls and boundaries? And on those days when you feel like you will never get out, do you sing, do you dance, do you pray to the doorways lurking in thick potential within every corner… Does the journey serve you, does it afflict you? What remains within and without the quest – does it, like you, have a voice? The labyrinth is a poem made of space, pathways, and walls. It’s a brutal poem – perhaps, at times, even a beautiful one.

We invite you to send us your best, your most honest piece(s) on the theme, LABYRINTH. Text-only submissions are welcome though we’re particularly interested in pieces that merge the written with the world of images – visual poems, comics, photo essays, black-out poetry, audio-visual pieces, spoken word, dance, etc.

Dhiyanah Hassan is an artist, writer, and energy worker whose practice explores the relationships between art, storytelling, and healing. Her work seeks to connect the soul and soil of the internal worlds orbiting within us, finding transformative expressions of the wild, the mystical, and the miraculous through artistic and multidisciplinary mediums. Through her projects, Dhiyanah facilitates spaces and conversations where creativity is utilized as a catalyst for healing, self-empowerment, and trauma recovery. In 2018, Dhiyanah ran a column on tarot, creativity, and healing on BHP. She recently ran a self-care workshop and co-facilitated a local women’s writing program. Her works have appeared in sister-hood, OCCULUM, and The Brown Orient. Website: www.bydhiyanah.com

For submissions on the theme of LABYRINTH, DHIYANAH is looking for your poetry, short stories, flash fiction, prose poems, art, collage, painting, photography – as well as non-fiction submissions: essays, reviews, commentary, features, interviews – and all hybrids, fragments and cross-forms.

Submission Guidelines

All submissions should be sent as attachments to guesteditorbhp@gmail.com

Please state the theme and form of your submission in the subject of the email. For example: LABYRINTH/POETRY

Poetry and Fiction

For poetry submissions, submit no more than three of your best poems. Short stories should be limited to 1,500 words or (preferably) less. We encourage flash fiction submissions, no more than three at a time. Send these in as a .doc or .docx file, along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.

Art
Submit hi-res images of your works (drawings, paintings, illustrations, collages, photography, etc) with descriptions of the work (Title, Year, Medium, etc) in the body of the email. Files should be in .JPEG unless they are GIFs or videos, and should not exceed 2MB in size for each work. File names should correspond with the work titles. Video submissions can be uploaded onto Youtube or Vimeo for feature on our website. Send these submissions along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.

Non-fiction
Non-fiction submissions (essays, reviews, commentary, interviews, etc) should be no more than 1, 500 words and sent as a .doc or .docx file along with your third-person bio/and optional photograph.

Submissions are open from 1st till 24TH DECEMBER – and will reopen again on 1st JANUARY 2020/for new theme/new editor/s.

BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing DHIYANAH HASSAN – friends, arsonistas, send our DECEMBER guest editor DHIYANAH your magic!