Shadows on the Stage
Call for Submissions

Submissions are currently OPEN for Shadows on the Stage, a genre short story and poetry anthology examining the theme of PERFORMANCE.

We are interested in stories told through the lens of genre (horror, fantasy, and science fiction) because genre is a performance in and of itself. Through using a monstrous creature created by a scientist, Mary Shelley examines the pursuit of knowledge, and whether it is man or creature who is the real monster. Through hobbits, elves, and wizards, J.R.R. Tolkien tells a story about temptation and the will to battle it. Through characters living in a dystopian society that burns books, Ray Bradbury explores ignorance and conformity. Wearing a mask of the fantastical in the way it tells/performs the story, genre storytelling is about the realities, emotions, and psyche of the human condition. Because of this performative nature, we want stories and poetry that focus on this particular theme within these genres.

Forest Publications is excited to see how writers will approach and interpret this rich theme through genre. We are accepting prose and poetry submissions. 

We welcome work from all writers, emerging and established, as well as other artists who may not regularly create in the literary medium. 

​Contributors for this collection do not need to reside in the UK. The anthology will be distributed throughout the UK and promoted & marketed through Forest’s wide networks. Upon publication, Forest will organize online and/or in person launches in Edinburgh and beyond. 

Forest is an unincorporated arts association. All profits will go to supporting artistic projects. Forest is eager to support emerging artists, group shows, experimental work, multi-media and performance art as well as fine art. As such, contributors will not be paid. They will receive a copy of the book. 
​
Thank you for your interest! We look forward to reading your work.

Nadine Brito & Claire Wallace
​Editors-in-Chief

 —Submission Guidelines—

Poetry submissions can consist of up to 5 poems, no poem going beyond 3 pages. In the case of multiple poem submissions, please send them separately through our submission portal.

Prose submissions can run up to 5,000 words, but no more.

Please submit your best work. We proofread accepted stories and perform light copyediting prior to their publication. You will have the opportunity to approve or decline the changes. We will not perform any developmental edits.

All submissions are free, and we do not provide feedback on pieces that are not selected as our association does not have the capabilities to support this. However, if you are interested in receiving feedback on your work for a nominal fee at a later time, there is a section on the application form where you may indicate this. Fee waivers are available for individuals from underrepresented groups. 

Work should be submitted as a .docx or .doc file accompanied by a PDF for more experimental layouts.

Sticking to Standard Manuscript Format isn’t essential, but please format your work in 12 point Times New Roman font unless using a different size or font style is integral to the piece(s) submitted.

Submit your work using the file name format of: firstname_surname_[nature of the work].
For example, jane_smith_poetry.

Writers may submit both prose and poetry if they wish. All submissions are capped at 5 total per individual.
This means that you may submit 3 poems and 2 short stories, but not 5 poems and 5 short stories. Only your first 5 submissions will be read.

Please indicate on the application form any content warnings. We will not accept any work with gratuitous violence and/or sexual content. Nor will we accept work with hate speech or messaging against any real-world demographic based on race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sex, sexuality, age, neurodivergence, physical or mental illness or disability, size, class, religion, or belief system. 

We don’t accept any work that has been generated in any way by AI. 

We prefer work that is previously unpublished both in print and online. However, we are open to previously published work should the rights and permissions remain with the writer. We will require proof of this and will reach out for additional details should we be interested in republishing your work. 

We welcome simulations submissions. If your piece is selected for publication elsewhere please let us know as soon as possible.

If your story is selected for publication in Shadows on the Stage we retain exclusive physical and digital publishing rights for one year. Afterward, the story will remain available in all formats of the book, but all rights revert to you. Note that your story will then be considered previously published, which may affect future submission opportunities with other markets, as not all markets accept previously published work.

We will respond to your submission within 3 months of the deadline.

Submit your work by clicking the button below or using the form available here by 11:59 pm GMT on 31st December 2024.

The exhibition centred around the film Surveillance Footage, by Agatha Scaggiante @agathapple with music by Griffin Jennings.

The film is composed of excerpts of open-source CCTV video feeds from around the world, accessed online from the artist’s own computer. It is a haunting collection of moments that reveal the strange and the beautiful of the everyday, moments caught on camera without the subjects’ and landscapes’ awareness of their being watched.

"Open-Up-To-Right-Here and then you will have something coming from your experience that the whole world will admire and need." - Ishmael Reed.
Link to full film: 
https://youtu.be/u9CMnPK56fQ

Complimenting the film are works exhibited by several other talented artists who similarly explore the intersection of the liminal and the mundane. The fact and process of observation itself is the subject matter for this collection of artists who use their various practices to capture the intertwined beauty and oddness of people and places that are easy to overlook, unless one is looking out.

Molly Wickett @mollywickettart :
My practice explores liminality through locating work in spaces which are neither here nor there. Instead of focusing on queerness and my disability as something negative, I want to explore the possibility of liminality as a tool for future building. These photographs were taken every morning at Sunrise, when I took my ice hands to the beach and watched them melt. Some mornings when I arrived, it was still dark. I loved the cyclical nature of the water returning, the tides moving, that for one hour I reached out and then it was all gone. Traces of the melting ice were left on the desolate beach.

Rachel Stanley @r.achelstanley  :
Rachel Stanley (b.1996, Epsom, based in Edinburgh, UK) is a painter whose practice speculates on the possibilities between abstraction and figuration. Taking reference from natural forms and the human body, the paintings perform a shifting of perspectives - looking across, over, under and through - in order to obscure and undo the landscape. Bringing sentience to otherwise static forms, the works exist in a grey ‘between' area, suggesting double meanings and requiring multiple visits.
The works employ a playful consideration of materiality and surface, utilising burlap, calico and muslin in place of canvas, and painting in varying degrees of thickness - gently staining, thickly layering, and using gestural mark-making more akin to drawing. This is an intuitive and sensory process, whereby paintings reveal themselves over time.

David Rae @davidrae_studio :
The locations forming the basis for my work are mainly those that featured in my childhood, places visited or those that are re-imagined. Capturing a sense of place is an important aspect to each piece; alluding to an atmosphere in which I explore the presence of absence. The depicted scenes can be a fusion of multiple places, creating somewhere believable but ultimately never an exact setting, populated by objects that suggest human interaction and originate from my wider interests, sport being a prime example. Within the paintings I like to include subtle narratives creating an element of curiosity but not to an overpowering level, just enough to question the viewer’s judgement of what the work could be about.
The title and compositional elements within the paintings will inevitably offer clues regarding each painting’s subject.

Daisy Mason @daisymason.studio :
New Lanark marks the beginning of an ongoing photographic project engaging with often overlooked yet omnipotent surveillance objects found all over the UK. This work aims to nod at the panoptic structure of government bodies and private companies who feel the need to monitor even the most innocuous locations.
Daisy Mason graduated from Fine Art Photography at The Glasgow School of Art in 2022. Her practice is a combination of installation and photographic work exploring surveillance capitalism and culture in domestic and industrial spaces.

François Giro @girofrancois :
François Giro is a self-taught artist based in Edinburgh, who works primarily with ink on paper. His work explores the psychological dimension of space. He either draws directly on location or improvises drawings that are more ambitious in his studio, without a preliminary plan, in order to intuitively respond to the impressions and observations that he remembers of real places (usually familiar neighbourhoods in Edinburgh or places observed while travelling). He is interested in showing how our mind, but also our most mundane gestures, shape the environment that we inhabit.

Millie Player @__mllplr :
I view time as an empty vessel, into which we may pour our perception of it. We may each create our own visualisations of time, mythologizing lives and a past that are not ours. Seemingly meaningless jottings can become talismans of a different existence; Past and present textures can quietly resonate next to one another in temporal suspension.

Rachel Howarth @rachel_howarth_  :
My art practice is concerned with ephemerality and ephemera - with things not built to last, lest become ‘fine art.’ Often, I paint from analog images that I can rifle through by hand (such as postcards or in magazines). However, sometimes a screen presents me with something to ‘screenshot’ and paint. When watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire reruns during the national lockdown, I noticed how strange and intense the show looked. In painting these strange moments, of random contestants chosen for their facial expressions, they become even stranger. The intimate closeups paired with multiple choice questions out of context look quite absurd. 

Special thanks to Emily at Forest Arts for making all of this possible.
Serious thanks as well to all the Forest Arts volunteers, Aleks for kindly and perfectly installing all the work, Sophie Nardi-Bart for countless help, the crew at Sett Studios and of course the talented artists who have put their time, energy and creativity into this show.