As we mark 50 years of London Pride, we invite you to submit a 250-word flash fiction, memoir or poem that brings to life an LGBTQIA+ person or story from 50+ years ago.
Too many LGBTQIA+ lives and stories from the past are hidden – as one of the writers we’ll be referencing in our ‘Queer Storytelling’ course, Carmen Maria Machado writes – ‘there is an archival silence… gaps where people never see themselves or find information about themselves. Holes that make it impossible to give oneself a context.’
We are looking for queer words that preserve, explore and celebrate our rich history. We will award one winner – the winning entry obtaining a half-price place (£92) on our ‘Queer Storytelling’ course which runs for 6-weeks this autumn.
This course will guide, coach and support queer writers to write the stories they thought impossible, but drawing on the right resources, can transcend anything they’ve written before. Be inspired to make your own contribution to reimagining the queer archive.
The Prompts
Submit a 250 word flash, either fiction, memoir or a poem that brings to life any LGBTQIA+ person or story from 50+ years ago. This could be a publicly unknown or well-known queer person, or even someone you know in your life.
Submissions
Please send your piece, which can be up to 250 words in any genre, to ennis@londonlitlab.co.uk by 30th July 2022.
Prize
We will publish the winner and the three runners up on our website (unless you ask us not to, which is absolutely fine), and choose a winner by mid August 2022.
The winner will receive a half-price place on ‘Queer Storytelling: a site of resistance, a site of possibility’, led by Andrew Kauffmann. This is a six-week online course running from September 7th – October 18th 2022. You can find out more about this course here.
Small print
Please only send us your own writing. If we deem any of the pieces we receive to be offensive, to us or to potential readers on our website, we won’t publish them here.
We look forward to reading your stories!