Disturbing the Body

We are looking for submissions of speculative autobiography from women and those who self-identify as women of all ages in the UK.

Following the success of Disturbing the Beast, a collection of weird fiction stories by some of the best women writers in the UK, we are now on the lookout for submissions to an anthology of women’s memoir centred about experiences of mis-behaving bodies. 

Disturbing the Body, came to fruition when Verity Holloway, author of Psuedotooth, Beauty Secrets of the Martyrs and The Mighty Healer, approached Boudicca Press with a unique idea that she felt needed to be heard. Verity started writing about her perception of pain in intensive care following her experience with open-heart surgery. Tanked up on morphine, Verity met a lot of people who turned out not to be real, time was warped and she felt that the sense of her body completely changed. After speaking with Georgina Bruce of This House of Wounds and Louise Kenward who has written for The Clearing, BMJ Medical Humanities and Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness, she discovered that they had all written creative non-fiction pieces in response to their unnerving experiences with their bodies. Verity says “It’s world changing, isn’t it, when your body goes out from under you? You see everything from a strange angle.”

We’re looking for pieces that explore women’s personal experiences of fractured relationships with their bodies. Body themes could range from experiences with major operations, chronic health conditions or chronic pain, dealing with cancer, childbirth, disability, or any moment where a woman can feel powerless and out of the ordinary against her own body.  Your piece must be about something you personally experienced, but you may be as creative as you please. Think the arch fantasy of Angela Carter, the anxious surrealism of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and the body horror of Margaret Atwood. Tell us about your body, your way.

The anthology will be funded by, and subject to a successful Kickstarter campaign which will launch in early June 2020 and will be published by Boudicca Press in October 2020. Authors will receive an author fee. 

We welcome submissions from 8th March until midnight on Thursday 7th May. 

Guidelines: 

• Must be speculative autobiography on the theme of bodies going wrong and how we narrate our own experiences
• No minimum word count, maximum word count 8,000
• Your submission must be your original work not previously published anywhere online or in print
• Only one entry per person
• Stories should be submitted in a Word doc with Ariel or Times New Roman, 12pt minimum, double spaced, page numbered
• DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR NAME IN YOUR WORD DOCUMENT SUBMISSION. All submissions will be considered anonymously 
• Email your submission to boudiccapress@gmail.com with the subject line DISTURBING THE BODY SUBMISSION, a 50-word biography and the title of your piece. If you require postal submission please contact us for an address. 
• Any submissions received after 7th May will not be considered. 

SUBMIT TO DISTURBING THE BODY