As you may know, Charly Harbord and I are currently co-editing a special issue of the British Fantasy Society’s BFS Journal. We have decided to extend the deadline for submissions to 29th October for writers from the following: POC, LGBTQIA+- communities, disabled and chronic illness communities, neurodiverse writers, writers with specific learning difficulties, displaced people and those from non-anglophone countries (please note submissions must be in English), and otherwise disadvantaged writers. For more details, read on…
Thank you to everyone who submitted to the BFS Journal’s Fantasy and Gaming special issue! We have been delighted by the response from fans, critics, creators, scholars and more, as well as the fabulous range of topics you’ve chosen to write about. Our final decisions will be very difficult.
However, after considering this round of submissions, we would like to offer an additional opportunity to writers from marginalized backgrounds. We will therefore be extending the deadline to 29th October for writers from the following: POC, LGBTQIA+- communities, disabled and chronic illness communities, neurodiverse writers, writers with specific learning difficulties, displaced people and those from non-anglophone countries (please note submissions must be in English), and otherwise disadvantaged writers. We will also be able to offer extensions to this deadline.
Please note we do not require disclosure of submitter identities, but we hope that writers outside of these communities will respect the spirit of this extended call.
Considering the potential additional challenges faced by marginalized communities, the extended call will give writers extra time to complete their submissions. By having a more diverse pool of submissions to choose from, we’ll be able to say this issue truly represents the best writing available for this Fantasy and Gaming special issue.
You can find the updated call for submissions below. We hope that you’ll be able to support your friends from these communities by sharing this opportunity.
Ruth and Charly
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Call for Submissions: British Fantasy Society Journal Special Issue on Fantasy and Gaming
Fantasy and Gaming have a long association, from the entwined history of Dungeons & Dragons and Epic Fantasy, to the real-life manufacture of Thud!, the game from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Fantasy games and their representations in other media have affected gambling laws, education, the treatment of social isolation, and even Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse (via Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One).
With this in mind, the British Fantasy Society Journal opens its call for submissions for a very Special Issue on Fantasy and Gaming. Following the proposed BFS constitution, our definition of fantasy includes “Science Fiction, Heroic, Horror, Supernatural and related fields”. Meanwhile, we use games to describe both table-top and video games (including computer games).
Topics may include, but are not limited to…
– History of Fantasy Games
– The influence of games on other areas of fantasy (e.g. D&D and Fantasy, etc)
– Portrayals of games in fantasy books, movies, and other genre media
– The impact of fantasy games in other spheres (e.g. running apps, education, etc)
– The symbolism of games in fantasy
– LARPing based on fantasy games
– Choose Your Own Adventure stories
– Fantasy games and the Law
– Representation, diversity, and access in fantasy games
– Current debates in fantasy games
This issue will contain pieces of 1.5k to 3k words. We look forward to receiving opinion pieces, reviews, responses to current debates, retrospectives and biographies, interviews (please query the word count for any interviews), and other non-fiction pieces. We especially welcome submissions and queries from early-career writers and writers from traditionally marginalized backgrounds.
The British Fantasy Society membership comprises fans, creators and people across the creative industries, as well as academics. As the BFS website states, “Our readers are generally quite knowledgeable when it comes to fantasy, so don’t be afraid to suggest topics slightly off the beaten track” – as long as they relate to Fantasy and Gaming!
Please note that for this issue we will not be accepting academic papers. However, we encourage academics to submit pieces in a style suitable for audiences outside the academy. You can find examples of the style we are looking for in Uncanny Magazine (www.uncannymagazine.com/ under Non-fiction > Essays) and Strange Horizons (www.strangehorizons.com under Archives > Non-fiction). Please note that any pieces in a “listicle” style will have a higher bar to clear than other submissions, but please get in touch if you have a good idea for this format.
All submissions, plus any queries about possible submissions, should be sent to: BFSSpecialEdition@gmail.com.
All submissions should adhere to the General Submission and BFS House Style Guidelines (found on the BFS website at: https://www.britishfantasysociety.org/bfs-journal-submission-guidelines/).
Please note that we also request that files are submitted in a sans serif font (Arial preferred) and are double-spaced. Please supply any accompanying images as separate files, and use letters in the filenames to indicate the preferred order (e.g. a-arrival.jpg, b-conversation.jpg, c-departure.jpg).
All contributors to the BFS Journal who are not society members will receive a free copy of the Journal. Further details of the Submission Terms can be found here: https://www.britishfantasysociety.org/bfs-journal-submission-guidelines/.
The deadline for submissions isSaturday 15th October 2022 by 11:59pm BSTSaturday 29th October 2022 by 11:59pm BST for writers from the following: POC, LGBTQIA+- communities, disabled and chronic illness communities, neurodiverse writers, writers with specific learning difficulties, displaced people and those from non-anglophone countries (please note submissions must be in English), and otherwise disadvantaged writers. We will also be able to offer extensions to this deadline..
We look forward to receiving your work!Ruth EJ Booth and Charly Harbord
Special Issue Editors