Guest Editing Announcement: Reckoning 4

I have the utter delight of announcing that I’ll be the guest editor for Year 4 of Reckoning, a journal of creative writing on environmental justice. Submissions are open now, and will remain open until the autumn equinox (Monday September 23, 2019), unless the issue is filled prior to that date.

I’ve been reading Reckoning since Marissa Lingen introduced me to its founder, Michael J. DeLuca, around when the first issue came out. The journal has produced some of my favorite pieces of creative work engaging with the environment, climate change, and the anthropocene in the past couple of years, and I’m very honored that Michael is trusting me with the shape of Year 4.

Because it’s me — city-obsessive, systems-thinking me — I’ve created a themed call for this issue which is broadly construed as human relationships to the built environment. I’m looking for fiction and creative nonfiction, preferably between 1000 and 10,000 words (but feel free to submit longer and shorter as well). The full call for submissions is on Reckoning’s site, here: https://reckoning.press/submit/, and my specific guidelines are here: https://reckoning.press/reckoning-4-submission-call-fiction-nonfiction/ … and also repeated below.

For Reckoning 4, I am specifically seeking works which address the relationship of humans to the built environment: the city as organism; climate-changed urban spaces; architecture as environmental in/justice; the point of contact where human alteration and ecological alteration touch; fantasias of density and of absence; blurs between organic and inorganic forms, places, and persons. Etcetera.

I am primarily looking for fiction, but am also interested in creative nonfiction on the above theme. A speculative element is preferred, but not necessary, for fiction. I will also consider work that falls outside the theme if it is otherwise deeply compelling and fits Reckoning’s general guidelines.

I’m going to try to stick to a 30-day turnaround for initial responses. Fingers crossed. I’ve been a submissions editor before, but this is my first in-charge-of-driving-the-spaceship-around editorial gig.

Please do send me your work. I can’t wait to read it.