Submission Guidelines:
Email story in word attachment to talesfromthevelvetchamber@gmail.com. Subject line: Submission. Documents should be double-spaced, 12 pt. font, Times New Roman. Paragraphs should be indented five spaces. Bio and all contact information, including snail mail address and phone, in the upper right hand corner. Stories should not exceed 5,000 words. Please do not send work-in-progress. Final drafts only.
What I am looking for:
I am looking for stories that radically revise stereotypes of "bad women" in the Bible, in myth and in fairy-tales. Stories that aren't afraid to be literary, brainy, transgressive, graceful, dark, or sexy. Think: Lilith, Medea, the Wicked Stepmother, the Evil Witch, Pandora, Eve, crones, sibyls, fates, muses. Contemporary adaptations are fine. Mythical adaptations equally welcome.
Stories that, despite their attempts to subvert traditional narratives, still retain the "magic of once upon a time." Erotic content is fine and even welcome as long as its not gratuitous. A story about Lilith from the Old Testament, for example, could hardly be complete without a strong sexual component. Stories that take an old trope, such as the beauty and passivity of Cinderella, and transform it, are equally welcome.
There are always stories behind the stories. On the subject of Cinderella, the older version is Germanic and called Ashputtel. This is a far bloodier, complex and darker version; more interesting, more challenging. Most of the classical fairy-tales that children read today, and whose images permeate through much of modern culture, issue from the pen of a Mr. Charles Perrault. In the latter part of the 17th century, he transformed folk-tales from the oral tradition into the Broadway musicals we know today. Think: Little Mermaid. In short, sanitized, and prettified. Shorn of the violence, the sex, the secrets, magic, mystery and violence.
What comes down to us is that only men go out on quests, slay dragons, save the village. Only men are brave, perform miracles, or send the devil back down to hell. And so it is reflected in our culture. Women are objects, women are mothers, or women are whores. We don't save the world. We don't create language. We don't become prophets or gods. We don't tell our own stories.
The spine: We begin to see these mythical women through another lens.
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