When we assumed ownership of Politics & Prose last year, one of the first things we did was hire Susan Coll to help expand the store’s offerings of courses, trips, programs, and other literary activities. An accomplished novelist herself, Susan brought with her a passion for all things written, and she was especially eager to help emerging and lesser known writers and their books become more visible within our community and beyond.
Among her hoped-for projects was the creation of a P&P imprint. When the store acquired a print-on-demand book machine nick-named Opus last fall, Susan suggested publishing works under a P&P imprint on the machine. Soon she enlisted other staff members. Not surprisingly, the response was immediate and enthusiastic, and a team of volunteers from our main sales floor, Children’s department, administrative office, and shipping and receiving division got together and began to brainstorm.
They quickly agreed that the first book published under the P&P imprint should be an anthology of original works that would capture a sense of people and places in Washington and the surrounding metropolitan area. This initial focus, they felt, was in keeping with P&P’s mission of bringing the Washington community together to support local writers, poets, and artists—aspiring and accomplished—whose stories and talents too often go unnoticed, unheard, or untold. They also came up with a title for the first anthology: District Lines.
We’re now accepting submissions for the first anthology, looking for poems, essays, short stories, musings, ramblings, scribbles, doodles, comics, or graphics. The only requirement is that the work relate to something about Washington – be it a person, place, event, scene, memory, or whatever else comes to mind. Submissions must be original and previously unpublished and under 3,000 words. All entries should be in a word document, double-spaced, using Times New Roman, 12-point font. Graphics must be in a PDF file that can be reproduced in black and white.
All entries must be accompanied by a $10 entry fee, which will allow us to give each author of a submission chosen for publication a free copy of the anthology. We hope to hold an event at the store once the anthology is published, and will ask selected contributors to join us for an open reading. The deadline for submissions is September 22, 2012.
We’re excited to launch this new project and look forward to publishing unseen works that can deepen our understanding and appreciation of the community in which we live.
To submit work, please visit http://politicsprose.submittable.com/submit.
--Brad and Lissa
