Monday, January 5, 2009

Love, Wide Open

Call for submissions to a charity anthology featuring a variety of written and graphic media, to benefit PFLAG. From the anthology's LiveJournal Community:

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Home is the one place you know you’re always welcome –- except when it’s not. Every year teenagers are turned out of their homes with no resources and nowhere to go. Survival rates for teen throwaways are dismal, as most are physically and sexually abused, and the life expectancy rate averages thirty-five years. It can be even worse for the estimated 40-60% of throwaways who have been turned out because of their sexual orientation. Even if there is a shelter that will take them in off the street, many teen homeless shelters are run by organizations that take an unfriendly view of homosexuality and this attitude shows in their treatment of GLBT teens. This isn’t even counting the number of adults who are cut off emotionally when they come out to their families. Many of them are excluded from holidays, weddings, births, and other family events.

We know it can be difficult when a family member, especially a son or a daughter, comes out. A lot of what society has to say about the GLBT community is unflattering and sometimes downright hostile. It’s also usually untrue, and thousands of people are suffering because of the misinformation that feeds anti-gay attitudes.

You now have the chance to contribute to an artistic collaboration that hopes to help people, especially parents, realize that being gay isn’t the end of the world for their loved one. In fact, with their help, it can be just another healthy part of what makes that person unique and beautiful. Love, Wide Open is a not-for-profit artistic anthology that seeks to help the parents of GLBT teens cope with their child coming out to them. All proceeds will be directed to PFLAG (http://www.pflag.org) to help them continue the work they are already doing in this field.

Author and poet M. Jules Aedin is the creative co-chair for the project, and journalist Mark Viola is the organizational co-chair.

Beginning January 1, 2009, we will be accepting poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, essays, art, and photography. Submissions will be open until June 30, 2009, when the editing and proofing staff will begin the final decisions on what pieces will be accepted for publication. There will be no royalties or fees paid to contributors as this is an entirely non-profit collaboration. All word-based submissions should be 8,000 words or less, and visual artists should be aware that their work will be scaled to fit the page. Copyright for all works will remain with the creator.

All submissions should focus on helping people, especially parents, accept the orientation and sexual identity of their gay, lesbian, bisexual, gender variant or questioning children. Extreme negativity is discouraged. Degradation of any group of people, whether defined by religion, sexuality, age, ethnicity, etc., will not be tolerated. Disagreement with the beliefs and creeds of any religion or ideology must be addressed respectfully.

For more information, visit our blog at http://community.livejournal.com/lovewideopen or e-mail us at lovewideopen@gmail.com.

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This sounds like a pretty awesome cause and I'm definitely going to write something to submit for it. I encourage any other writers and artists out there to do so as well. Check out the lovewideopen community on LJ for more info.

Angie

6 comments:

laughingwolf said...

thx angie, did not know of this before, i'll add something, as i'm sure my friends will...

Angie said...

LW -- awesome! Thanks, hon! :D

Angie

laughingwolf said...

i posted this on my page, but it got buried, unintentionally

Angie said...

LW -- that's unfortunate. :( And actually, I went looking for it and couldn't find it, even hitting "Older posts" a few times. If it's buried it found itself a major sinkhole to hide in. Weird.

Thanks for trying, though. :)

Angie

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this! I look forward to seeing your submission. :)

Angie said...

Mjaedin -- you're very welcome, and good luck with the project. :D

Angie