The Eibonvale Chapbook Line is Temporarily Closing to Submissions.

The Eibonvale Chapbook Line is temporarily closing to submissions.  I have had a massive massive response to this and I need to work through them all and actually set about making some more books.  The decision-making has been and is predictably challenging – and if you haven’t heard from me yet, then you should do in the next couple of weeks.

This closure is only temporary and I hope to reopen again when I have released a few more titles.  Thanks to everyone who has sent material in!

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Humanagerie – Call for Works Reminder

Editors Sarah Doyle and Allen Ashley report that they have already had a good response to their call for submissions to the next Eibonvale press anthology “Humanagerie”. This is a gentle reminder that submissions close at midnight on 31 may 2018. Here is the spec:

HUMANAGERIE – a new anthology from Eibonvale Press UK. Edited by Sarah Doyle (poetry) and Allen Ashley (fiction).

“Humanagerie” will showcase both poetry and short fiction on the theme of animals. The book will not be about animals as such, but will instead be inspired by the characteristics that animals possess, and the points at which these intersect with – and manifest in – humanity.

We are interested in shifting states; in scenarios that explore duality, hybridity, and liminality; in the fluidity of identity We hope to discover new existential narratives in the spirit of Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” and Hermann Hesse’s “Steppenwolf”. We are seeking poems and short stories that contain some element of the speculative and/or the fantastical, the metaphorical, metaphysical or magical. Closing date is 31 May 2018. Paying £10 per story; £5 per poem. Full guidelines and details of how to submit can be found at the link below.

http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/infoforwriters.htm

The special offer for How Many Times? by Rhys Hughes is now live!

The special offer for How Many Times? by Rhys Hughes is now live! And remember – hardcover only! Click here to order.

To recap: The author has provided a bundle of extremely rare signed and numbered chapbooks – highly limited runs of works from 2013 that have previously only been available as ebooks. Only ten copies were ever made of each title and they have never been offered for sale. I have 18 copies in total and the first 18 orders for the hardcover of How Many Times? will receive a randomly selected chapbook as a free gift. This will be strictly first come first served (going by the time the order is placed with Paypal) and for this reason, I will be opening the orders for this title at 6PM UK time, Saturday 31st March. Please be ready to place orders then as I have no idea how quickly these will go! This only applies to orders placed directly with Eibonvale Press and only to the hardback edition. Any questions or anything I have forgotten, please drop me an email!

http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/books/books_howmanytimes.htm

Humanagerie Gathers Pace – Call for Works

Just a reminder that the call for works for the humanagerie anthology edited by Allen Ashley and Sarah Doyle is well and truly open.  Download the guidelines here.

“Humanagerie” will showcase both poetry and short fiction on the theme of animals. The book will not be about animals as such, but will instead be inspired by the characteristics that animals possess, and the points at which these intersect with – and manifest in – humanity. It will also be based on the strange and beautiful adjectives used to describe such traits, such as:

Aquiline – eagle

Chelonian – tortoise or turtle

Leporine – hare

Ostracine – oyster

Pieridine / Pierine – butterfly

Vespine – wasp / hornet

and many many more. You will find a much larger list in the guidelines.

We are interested in shifting states, in scenarios that explore duality, hybridity, and liminality. We are asking writers to consider how animalistic attributes might manifest in the human psyche – or vice versa. We want hints of scales, tails, fur and fins… gills, claws, paws and spines… glimpses of horns, tusks, teeth and tongues… stalking, slinking, slithering and stomping… roars, whimpers, howls and song. We want breath, heat, musk. We want landscapes ranging from urban wastelands to frozen tundra, from bedsits to coastlines, from suburbia to savannah – and the imagined worlds between. We want water and we want fish out of water. We want the visceral and the vulnerable, the slippery and the synaesthetic, emergence and extinction.

The submissions window will run from March 1st until May 31st 2018. The word limits are up to 60 lines for poetry and 4,000 words for fiction.

Download the guidelines here.

Announcing a New Collection of Experimental Works by Rhys Hughes and a Special Offer for the First 18 Orders

A very curious little book will be available to order as of next Saturday – How Many Times? by Rhys Hughes. Hughes has never been a stranger to experimental fiction and unusual ways of constructing stories, and this mini-collection gathers some of his most far-reaching examples, placed squarely in the world of OuLiPo writing. Short for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle or the workshop of potential literature, OuLiPo is a grouping of authors who fashion works based on constrained writing techniques – writing that follows rigorous and extremely precise rules concerning structure and layout etc. And here, we encounter works based on rigid numerical constraints, works in the form of grids that can be read in any direction, and a “logico-erotic tale in which the permutations of the sexual acts are based on the workings of logic gates.”

The intricacy of construction within these carefully defined restraints is stunning but the resulting literary world is still very much the author’s own, filled with his characteristic sense of humour, the absurd and the fantastical.

This is a slim but large-format book to provide space for all the complex layouts, grids, structures etc. that make up these stories.  The contents list is as follows:

In addition, we have a special special offer for the first 18 purchases of the hardback.  The author has provided a bundle of extremely rare signed and numbered chapbooks – highly limited runs of works from 2013 that have previously only been available as ebooks.  Only ten copies were ever made of each title and they have never been offered for sale.  I have 18 copies in total and the first 18 orders for the hardcover of How Many Times? will receive a randomly selected chapbook as a free gift.  This will be strictly first come first served (going by the time the order is placed with Paypal) and for this reason, I will be opening the orders for this title at 6PM UK time, Saturday 31st March.  Please be ready to place orders then as I have no idea how quickly these will go!  This only applies to orders placed directly with Eibonvale Press and only to the hardback edition.  Any questions or anything I have forgotten, please drop me an email!

I will announce this again on Saturday – but remember the date!  🙂

Opening for a New anthology – Humanagerie, edited by Allen Ashley and Sarah Doyle

Eibonvale Press will be open for submissions for a new anthology edited by Allen Ashley and Sarah Doyle. “Humanagerie” will showcase both poetry and short fiction on the theme of animals. The book will not be about animals as such, but will instead be inspired by the characteristics that animals possess, and the points at which these intersect with – and manifest in – humanity. It will also be based on the strange and beautiful adjectives used to describe such traits, such as:

Aquiline – eagle

Chelonian – tortoise or turtle

Leporine – hare

Ostracine – oyster

Pieridine / Pierine – butterfly

Vespine – wasp / hornet

and many many more. You will find a much larger list in the guidelines.

We are interested in shifting states, in scenarios that explore duality, hybridity, and liminality. We are asking writers to consider how animalistic attributes might manifest in the human psyche – or vice versa. We want hints of scales, tails, fur and fins… gills, claws, paws and spines… glimpses of horns, tusks, teeth and tongues… stalking, slinking, slithering and stomping… roars, whimpers, howls and song. We want breath, heat, musk. We want landscapes ranging from urban wastelands to frozen tundra, from bedsits to coastlines, from suburbia to savannah – and the imagined worlds between. We want water and we want fish out of water. We want the visceral and the vulnerable, the slippery and the synaesthetic, emergence and extinction.

The submissions window will run from March 1st until May 31st 2018. The word limits are up to 60 lines for poetry and 4,000 words for fiction.

Download the guidelines here.

 

Three New Chapbooks Accepted

I now have three more chapbooks accepted for Eibonvale Press. I shall reveal more shortly, but for now, I am very happy to welcome three excellent short works by Ian Kappos (Crossfaded in Narnia), Gaurav Monga (Family Matters) and David Gullen (Third Instar). I will not be rushing these out immediately like last time – Rosanne Rabinowitz’s collection Resonance and Revolt is definitely the next project on the list – but I hope to get them out in the first half of this year.

And if you still have submissions with me, this doesn’t mean it’s over. I am still reading and making selections – and still keen to receive more as well, especially from women authors. Check the Eibonvale Press website for more details.

Launching the New Chapbook Line – Three Titles Available to Order

The new Eibonvale Press Chapbook Line is now a reality, with no less than three small books available to order – in both hardcover and paperback.  You don’t see that many hardcover chapbooks around unfortunately but I am really pleased with the results.  The first set of books includes titles by Kristine Ong Muslim, D. F. Lewis and Tom Johnstone.  They can be purchased either individually or as a set on the Eibonvale website: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/chapbooks.html

 

And a reminder – I am still open for submissions for more chapbooks.  Indeed, I hope to keep this permanent. I am especially keen to hear from the under-represented and those not published by Eibonvale before.  You can find full details here: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/infoforwriters.htm

Eibonvale Press is Opening for Submissions For a New Chapbook Line

It has been a while, unfortunately, since Eibonvale Press was open to public submissions.  This is not a condition that I particularly like, since I always valued being open to new authors. However, sheer busyness means that I have to keep careful control of the press to avoid getting swamped – and in the end exhaustion from trying to do too much led to me taking a break entirely.  Now however, I am releasing a call for works specifically for a new line of chapbooks that I am starting.  I am looking for individual works or micro-collections of up to 10,000 words or so.  You can see the full details and download the guidelines here:

http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/infoforwriters.htm

I am specifically keen to find some new faces here, especially the under-represented, which the press rather needs!  Indeed, I am hoping that about two thirds of these will be people who have not been published by Eibonvale before.

I am seeing this line of chapbooks as visually rather different to the existing Eibonvale books, with covers based more on simple line-art rather than complex collages.  The recent special offer chapbook by Brendan Connell is a simple example of what I have in mind, as is the kind of art that I have used before in the interior of certain books.  For example, here and here.

I hope to do these chapbooks in both hardcover and paperback, both of which will be quite economically priced volumes.  Tiny hardcovers are very much a possibility with my printers and they are not something I have experimented with until now.  Hardcovers are still my favourite binding, and they do sell – sometimes even outselling the paperback edition – so there is really no reason why I should not make them here.  Hopefully the hardcovers would be a nice collectable matching set!

I am really quite excited about this.  Hopefully these chapbooks will be a lively thread running through Eibonvale Press for a while yet.

A Look at Curious Births to Light the Universe

Here is a look at the cover of Brendan Connell’s chapbook Curious Births to Light the Universe. This style of art is very different to the usual Eibonvale covers, but one that I really enjoy doing and one that I hope rather lends itself to chapbooks.  I hope there will be more of these.

Just to reiterate, there will be only 50 copies of this 44 page book of microfictions and they will only be available as a free gift alongside Hardcover preorders of his collection Pleasant Tales, or as a special bundle with the paperback. Visit the Eibonvale Press website for more info and to get copies while they last.  Way over half of them have already sold, so if you want a copy of this, don’t delay too much longer!