From Rachel Moritz, author of a forthcoming MIEL chapbook, this call for essays on Caesarean births. (Note that this will not be published by MIEL—just signal-boosting.)
Call for submissions
We seek personal essays from individuals who have had C-Section births for an anthology that will be submitted to publishers in spring 2015.
While birth stories will likely be an important component of many essays, the anthology will focus on reflections during the months or years following a C-section. For instance, how has Caesarean birth, whether planned or unplanned, influenced your perspective on motherhood/parenthood, the body, the medical establishment, or natural birth stories? As three mothers who have noted a dearth in literature about the post C-Section experience after the first six weeks, we are looking for essays that articulate multifaceted perspectives not widely represented in popular or medical writing. We seek fresh conversations across identifications of race and ethnicity, age, class, gender, sexuality, and ability.
Essays should be no more than 15 double-spaced pages and submitted as a Word document to Birthessay@gmail.com. Please include e-mail contact information and a short bio. Questions should also be directed to this email address.
Deadline: February 28, 2015.
Our role as editors will be to discern connections and intriguing dissonance among the essays, as well as to converse with writers about their pieces. Submissions, however, should be polished and in final form. Any revisions we request will be minor.
Editors:
Amanda Fields is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose work has been published in Indiana Review, Brevity, Superstition Review, and others. She co-edited Toward, Around, and Away from Tahrir: Tracking Expressions of Emerging Egyptian Identity (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). She gave birth to her daughter via C-Section in 2013.
Kathleen Glasgow‘s work has appeared in The Cimarron Review, Bellingham Review and many other journals. She writes for The Writer’s Almanac and lives in Saint Paul, MN. Her daughter was born in November, 2012; her son was born in June, 2008. Both children were delivered via C-section.
Rachel Moritz is the author of the poetry collection Borrowed Wave, forthcoming from Kore Press. Her work has appeared in American Letters and Commentary, Colorado Review, Iowa Review, Verse Daily, and other journals. She edits poetry for Konundrum Engine Literary Review. Her son was born via C-Section in 2010.