Our theme for Issue #7: ACTION!

Submissions open October 1-31, 2024

There is a figure of legend on several college campuses known as The Action Man. In the time of landline telephones, he would call the numbers of student dormitories at random, and ask, “Are you looking for some action?” (Perhaps now, with no more landlines to call, he slides into your DMs instead.)

Most students, exasperated, hung up immediately. Some speculated about what would happen next, should they answer the query; the prurient guessed at something illicit, while the skeptical swore that The Action Man was a prankster middle-school boy, perhaps one whose voice had changed just enough to impersonate his elders. If those students who continued the call have a story to tell, few have learned its conclusion.

What we want now is to know the end of the story. 

But naturally, that’s not the only thing we want to read. We would like to hear your story, whatever it might be; it could be a story of taking action, or it could be a story of the absence of action, of paralysis (emotional, psychological, physical, or otherwise) or lethargy. 

It could be a heartfelt poem about the unmet desire for action. Why did she never tell me how she felt, all those years ago? Where would I be now if she had?

It could be an essay about that one summer you spent on a film set, with a timid director whose whispered call of “Action!” went unheard among the bustle of production, or a piece about your zeal for a particular, underappreciated genre of cinema.

It could be a comic haiku contrasting the inactivity of lazy summer with - well, you tell us.

We also welcome rants and diatribes. We are happy to receive chapters or excerpts of unfinished novels, wandering non-fiction, and experimental pieces. And we love to receive art - photos, paintings, digital, whatever.

Would you like to write something in the voice of The Action Man, The Action Woman, The Action Person, or even The Action Figure? (To date, no one has ever submitted a story, poem, or essay to The Apostrophe in the voice of a plastic toy character. Will you be the first?)

Whatever you submit will be read with care and interest.

The theme for issue #7 is ACTION. Submissions open October 1-31, 2024. Issue #7 will be published starting on December 1, 2024. Visit our submissions page for more details.