We craft and tell stories because we’ve stood on the uncertain edge between the waking world and our imagination, between enchantment and fear. And we remember other stories that help us build our own stories, scraps of lumber and fragments of narrative we gather together to make stories for ourselves.

Call for Submissions: Tales of Kismet

Call for Submissions

Unsettling Wonder: a Journal of Folk and Fairy Tales

Issue 6: Tales of Kismet

The word Kismet has been gifted to the English language from the Turkish and Arabic. It has its roots in division and portion. In a topsy-turvy world, where both our lives and politics are changing in a whirl, what power can the ancient folk motifs of fate and destiny hold over us?

For the upcoming issue of Unsettling Wonder, we are looking for stories and poems that approach the theme of Kismet with a mystical or surrealist edge. Tell us about how people are changed (or perhaps not?) through their hard-wrought choices. Do forking paths torment, or will what is meant for us not pass us by? Is there an assigned path, or only wake-trails on the water? Are the Moirai spinning fate, or the veiled Fortuna, or perhaps the blind Borgesian gambler? Works that lead their characters and tellers through chance meetings, oracles, quests, or fortune decks: send them our way.

Surprise us with your short fiction, micro fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Artworks on the theme are also very welcome. Send your work as a Word document to UWsubmissions(at)unsettlingwonder(dot)com.

Submissions that do not strictly follow our guidelines will not be considered.

Deadline: 1 October 2017.


Reader Comments

  1. Good afternoon.
    My name is Paul Nixon and I am a North Carolina artist/sculptor/photographer. My illustrated characters as depicted on my website were all either hand carved wood or cast cement. in taking mostly black and white photographs of them I felt brought them to life in a mysterious way. I grew up in Ireland so many of these fairies are related to that landscape. Please let me know if any of these are of interest to you.

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