Accepting submissions for issue 3: friend or foe?
Submissions are due November 16 (EXTENDED!); (optional) pitches are due October 6.
ephemeral is an arts collective and resource hub dedicated to building resilient, place-based communities across the Colorado Plateau.
We are now accepting submissions for the third issue of ephemeral magazine until Sunday, November 9. The theme is friend or foe.
What we’re looking for: Journalism and ethnography that explores our current political climate; original research on desert flora and fauna; the story of the snake you found in your kitchen told through your frantic Google searches asking what to do; text fights you had with your enemies; your food poisoning experience shown through your City Market receipts; a board game that explores good vs. evil designed to be played on the pages of the magazine; optical illusions; fictional stories with wildly unreliable narrators; crush stories and confessions; sculpture that changes as the day’s light does.
Writers must be currently based in, or have spent significant time in, the Colorado Plateau region. We accept any media that can be published in print: writing, photography, art, what-have-you.
We use all profits made from the magazine to pay our contributors between $50-$100 per piece.
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Full Submission Guidelines: Send fully drafted pieces to ephemeral.editor@gmail.com with the subject line, “Submission: Friend or Foe” by Sunday, November 9. Please also send us your name, pronouns, and your connection to the Colorado Plateau.
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You can also submit a cover image! Submissions must fit 8.5x11in dimensions, and include the title “Friend or Foe” (either handwritten or creatively hidden in the art!) We’ll handle the overlay of the ephemeral branding, but there should be a spot for this as well. Please submit according to the above deadlines, either as a pitch or as a fully drafted submission. For the cover, here are options (not requirements!) to play with that we’re excited by:
Optical illusions
Multi-media explorations
Abstract and confusion?
Red and yellow, kill a fellow. Red and black, venom lack.
Recently, we were backpacking along the Escalante River, staring simultaneously up at the winding rock layers and down at the sandy path at our feet. As we walked, we met friends (prickly pear hot pink blooms) and foes (unrelenting mosquito swarms) and some less obviously known (looming cloud cover – comforting shade or impending flood?).
For ephemeral’s next issue, we’re posing this question: friend or foe? We wanted a theme that could both open scientific explorations about desert flora and reflect on the anger of our current political state. And most of all, we wanted a theme that forced a choice.
As we contemplate friends and foes, “Which Side Are You On?” is playing through the speakers -
My daddy was a miner
He′s now in the air and sun
He′ll be with you fellow workers
'Til every battle′s won
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Florence Reece wrote this union song in the early 1930s in Kentucky, reflecting the violent conflict between miners and coal companies. We continue to hear versions of the tune in protest chants and songs, demanding people to double down on their choices.
It feels good to choose sides; to have clearly defined who is a threat or not, to have something to fight for and something to fight against. Is that human nature? Does this divisiveness bring us closer or further to a more just society?
Especially now, our communities are divided. Mistrust for the other is high. Fear is just beneath the skin; nervous systems are ready to respond to threats. Friend or foe is a question of trust, of sides, of science, and of perception.
What hyper-local hill are your neighbors dying on? What would you say to your enemy if you could? Have a hot take on poison ivy, on wasps, on something so obviously evil—to you—that you can’t stand it?
What’s a friend to you? What’s a foe? How do you decide?