White Wall Review’s 54th print issue will explore words, stories, images and experiences centered on metamorphosis. We are looking for short fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, interviews, reviews, and visual art that moves and shakes, sheds its skin and stretches, ending up somewhere very different from where it started.
Who are changemakers? How does art change the artist (as well as changing the world)? Does switching languages mean switching identities? How about moving to a new place? A new relationship? A new body? In exploring the meanings of movement and change, let’s showcase writing that defies the ordinary and the status quo. Please send us your very best:
- Nerdy deep-dives on highly specific topics
- Clever interjections into contemporary discourse
- Stories that interrogate norms and power structures
- Poetry of place and migration
- Non-traditional or non-commercial art and literature (e.g. fanfic, fables, comics, zines)
In the realms of language, art, and meaning, how can change be deployed? Who are changemakers? Why do they do what they do? In the west, change often carries a positive connotation: evolution and growth are the powerful engines flinging us across history from mean beginnings to grand ends; but desecration, corruption, and degeneration are also forms of change. How can we as artists and writers utilize changeability and movement in our work? Are there instances when we ought to resist transformation?
Non-exhaustive list of possible topics that could be explored in this issue:
- Alchemy
- Utopias and otherworlds
- The art of translation, the lives of translators
- Flow, fluids (you never step into the same river twice)
- Hardship as growth
- Travel
- Puberty
- Aging
- Religious conversion
- The lives of revolutionaries
- Found text
- Actors, mimicry, and make-believe
- Adaptions, fan-works, and reinterpretations
- Evolution
- Natural disasters
- Lies, mistakes, and misapprehensions
- Impermanence, that which is lost to time
- Reconstruction
- Trans and gender nonconforming experiences
We are interested in pieces that dig beneath the surface, writing that comes from a place of curiosity, exploration, and play. Can we rebel against the rule of “write what you know?” Can we see old things with new eyes? Can we push past normalcy into the strange or even the ridiculous? Can we show how awkward change can be? How absurd? How hilarious? How about the following:
Clowns, tricksters? Jokes gone awry? The game of telephone? Lighthearted nonsense?
Submission deadline: March 15, 2024