Call for Submissions: Arriba Baseball!

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VAO Publishin invites submissions to the forthcoming print anthology Arriba Baseball!: A Collection of Latino/a Baseball Fiction

We are seeking submissions for a collection of the best Latino/a fiction that both celebrates and complicates the American pastime tentatively entitled Arriba Baseball!: A Collection of Latino/a Baseball Fiction.

“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America,” wrote historian Jacques Barzun, “had better learn baseball.” The first of its kind, Arriba Baseball!: A Collection of Latino/a Baseball Fictionseeks to challenge established paradigms within literary baseball fiction, a genre traditionally sustained by works from predominantly white, male authors (such as Bernard Malamud, Lamar Herrin, Eric Rolfe Greenberg, and W.P. Kinsella), and one which has historically excluded the Latino/a voice and other writers of color.

We invite such fiction (up to 5,000 words) concerning the game of baseball which challenges any and all exclusionary ideologies that have historically delimited the sport, and that meditates on the Latino/a contributions and experiences both on and off the field of play. While climactic home runs and strikeouts are okay, we prefer scoreboards but upside down. We also invite works that confront any of the issues surrounding baseball today, such as (but not limited to) the use of performance-enhancing drugs, queer and female performativity in baseball, the globalization of the sport, and baseball’s legacies of white privilege, racism, and male exclusivity in the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and other countries throughout Latin America where the game continues to flourish.

All fiction must be previously unpublished and of literary quality. Translations and works in Spanish will also be considered. We particularly encourage fiction from Latina and LGBT authors.

Contributors will be paid $25 upon acceptance and a percentage of the net sales over the first two years.

Questions/comments may be directed to baseball@vaopublishing.com.

Please send fiction submissions to vao.submittable.com/submit
EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS OCTOBER 19, 2012
About the Editor

Robert P. Moreira received his MFA from the University of Texas-Pan American in 2010. Currently, he is an English Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas-San Antonio researching alterity and constructed identities in sports fiction, films, and performance. His fiction, interviews, criticism, and scholarship have been published in a variety of venues, including Bluestem, Aethlon: Journal of Sports Literature, Storyglossia, Breakwater Review, Emprise Review, Metazen, and the anthologies SOL: Vol. I (SOL, 2012) and New Border Writing (Texas A&M Press, 2013). He is the recipient of two graduate fiction awards from the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers in 2009 and 2010, as well as the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award in 2011. He serves as a Contributing Editor for Dark Sky Books and head intern for American Letters and Commentary.