[glbtq]

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: UNPUBLISHED SHORT FICTION
BY LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDERED AUTHORS

Submissions open: September 1st, 2004
Submissions deadline: December 1st, 2004

Blithe House Quarterly : queer fiction lives here

URL and Submission Guidelines: http://www.blithe.com/

CONTACT: Aldo Alvarez adalvarez@aol.com

Blithe House Quarterly, the leading online journal of lesbian and gay literary fiction, is pleased to open submissions for its 2005 issues.

Now entering its ninth year of online publication, Blithe House Quarterly features new short stories by emerging and established lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) authors. With an average of over 24,000 readers per issue, Blithe House Quarterly is the most widely read of LGBT literary periodicals. OUT Magazine has called BHQ "the central publishing arm of new queer fiction." A recipient of Encyclopaedia Britannica's Internet Guide Award, the journal is also a featured site on internet hubs.

Suite101.com writes: "Blithe House Quarterly is an electronic magazine up to the standards of print." In fact, its editors aim for standards higher than those of many print media. The site publishes LGBT fiction not as a genre or ghetto, but as a literature that can stand by any other in its quality and innovation.

Philadelphia Gay News wrote in October 2003, "(BHQ's) virtual pages have brought the likes of Andrew Holleran, Ann Wadsworth and Kirk Read to a regular readership of about 24,000 that otherwise might not pick up a literary magazine or have access to a bookstore with gay titles." Other past contributors have included Jane Eaton Hamilton, Felice Picano, Leslea Newman, Brian Bouldrey, D. Travers Scott, Frankie Hucklenbroich, Bernard Cooper, and Eileen Myles.

"Setting the quality bar [for gay and lesbian writing] is the phenomenal site Blithe House Quarterly," said Gay & Lesbian Online in its 3rd edition. "It's awash in awards and rightly so. Of all gay and lesbian sites, Blithe House is the golden child, the one to be entered in the Literature Olympics. None of the stories needs special cosseting as our fiction. Be skeptical and go see the site!"

Blithe House Quarterly was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award in 2000. The GLAAD Media Award recognizes the "fairness, accuracy, quality, originality and impact of media representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community".

Appearing in BHQ can be a great way to be noticed. Stories first published in Blithe House Quarterly have been reprinted in MEN ON MEN, BEST LESBIAN LOVE STORIES, BEST AMERICAN GAY FICTION, and in numerous short story collections. Anthology and magazine editors as well as literary agents read BHQ and solicit material from people we've published.

For guidelines on submission, please visit the site at http://www.blithe.com/. Stories must be previously unpublished, fictional (as opposed to memoir), and usually 1500-7500 words in length. We recommend reading stories in recent issues. Open submissions for 2005 will be read by Cheryl E. Klein and Chip Livingston.

If you have questions after reading the site's comprehensive submission guidelines and Frequently Asked Questions, please direct them to Aldo Alvarez at adalvarez@aol.com.

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