Our theme for Issue #9: ROOTS
Submissions open April 1-30, 2025
When was the last time you rooted around for something? Was it something physical - the housekeys at the bottom of your bag, perhaps, or the vegetable peeler in a kitchen drawer? Rooting is a visceral activity. Rooting evokes a pig in s*** - which animal, so they say, epitomizes happiness - or, at least, a pig hunting for truffles, that most commoditized of luxuries. A root is a biological, living item that can masquerade as a piece of dead wood or sustain a life: carrots, radishes, and parsnips are roots, after all.
But the strongest war clubs are those made of oak roots.
Yet roots are, at the same time, the most nebulous of things. Family roots. Ethnic roots. Cultural roots. Our adult pathologies are rooted in childhood trauma.
We would like to read whatever it is you have to say about roots. And if you have something you want to share that has nothing to do with roots, send it anyway because we like to read good writing - honestly, this is more of a writing prompt than an ironclad theme.
This issue, we are especially eager to welcome members writing groups around the world who have affiliated with the parent organization of The Apostrophe, namely HKWC. If your group would like to affiliate with HKWC (and thus waive the membership requirement for publication), or if there isn’t a suitable local group for you to join, let us know at once. We are really not fussy about this. Our desire for folks to join writing groups is rooted (see what we did there?) in a desire to foster the writing community, not to exclude anyone. So: submit no matter what! We’ll read every word you send.
The theme for issue #9 is ROOTS. Submissions open April 1-30, 2025. Issue #9 will be published starting on June 1, 2025. Visit our submissions page for more details.