This folio seeks to collect novel, experimental, and personal approaches to video game writing from queer & trans writers of color.
Video games are fun! They can be challenging and weird and chock full of orientalism and homophobia; many of us love them despite it. This folio is interested in those kinds of tensions; what is the cost of escapism, in cases where your people are positioned as the enemy? What does it mean to execute a male power fantasy as someone affected by misogyny? Alternatively, what has escapism taught players about themselves — gender, ability, goals? What is fulfilling about inhabiting a different self?
This folio is interested in the art of video games, too; writing on music, sound effects, writing that challenges what “good” graphics look like, writing that explores labor; critical engagements, too, in the politics and approaches of narratives across franchises or individual games.
Video games are a vast medium — visual novels, RPGs, life sims, battle royale, puzzle matching — writing on any and all of them will be considered! In the spirit of this, the category of “creative nonfiction” is broad — list essays, lyrical works, prose poem sequences, comics, hybrid works and uncategorizable attempts alongside more standard essays are encouraged.
Both pitches and full drafts will be considered! Send your pitch or draft to summerisfarah@gmail.com with the subject line FOLIO SUBMISSION; include a brief bio and a line about your favorite game 🙂 Only one pitch/piece per person will be considered, with an 1,800 word limit.
Deadline: August 15, 2023
About the Journal
Anomaly is an international journal of literature and the arts. We provide a platform for works of art that challenge conventions of form and format, of voice and genre.
Anomaly is committed to actively seeking out and promoting the work of marginalized and underrepresented artists, including especially people of color, women, queer, disabled, neurodivergent, and gender nonconforming artists. We recognize that, as Kazim Ali wrote brilliantly to Aimee Nezhukumatathil: “The notion of an unbiased concept “literary merit” is an inherently and inescapably racist principle. An institution that relies on it is by definition a white supremacist institution.” Anomaly recognizes that aesthetics are not neutral, and that difference tends to be marginalized.
Anomaly is committed to encouraging experimentation in the arts.
Anomaly believes in the importance of compensating artists for their work, and we are working toward financial sustainability, which will allow us to compensate our contributors and our editorial staff for their work.
Anomaly focuses on especially innovative and experimental literature and arts. Anomaly is run by an entirely volunteer staff, dedicated to literature and art and the internet (well, more like literature and the art on the internet, but we’re fans of the medium, too).