The editorial we of the Safety Pin Review are thrilled to announce our first-ever contest, details of which can be found below. Not only will the winning piece be distributed and worn by at least four operatives across the globe (and later turned into a shirt!), but it will also be painted, designed and presented in a radical new format as yet unseen in the SPR. We are so excited to read your work.
Please read all of the contest guidelines carefully, as they are quite different from our regular submissions guidelines.
*If you’re new to the SPR (welcome!), I’d recommend you check out our About page and one of our back issues to see what we’re about.*
The winning piece will be painted onto a patch, which will then be distributed to 4-5 operatives around the country/world, who will wear it simultaneously for a week. The patch will be designed in a form very different from all of our past issues. I can assure you: it won’t be anything like we’ve done before.
In addition, the work will be published digitally as an issue of the Safety Pin Review, with accompanying action photos and commentary by the operatives. Finally, later on down the line, it will be made into a t-shirt, which will be given free to the winning author and be available to all for purchase.
Submissions are open from November 1, 2013 to midnight on December 15, 2013 January 1, 2014. The winning piece will be announced in January 2014, and published in various forms shortly thereafter.
Each piece should be no longer than 75 characters, including spaces, and including title. Titles are not necessary, and may only serve to frustrate your character count, but if used should be put in quotes. Yes, it’s extremely short, but we like it this way.
Please do not send previously published work.
Because these entries are so short (and thus tacitly encouraging of wild, voluminous experimentation), please limit your submission to three well-honed pieces.
While we generally encourage formal experimentation, given the way in which the winner will be published for this contest all submissions must be in plain text – that is, you should stay away from anything that requires alternate fonts, mysterious foreign characters, or wonky formatting, because it cannot be maintained for publication. On a similar note, please do not include line breaks.
Any submissions heedless of the above technical guidelines (for shame!) will be ignored.
Far be it for us to dictate the content of your submissions, but given the peculiar way in which the winning entry will be published, here’s a list of encouraging words (which, in a way, are always relevant given the medium and format in which the SPR publishes):
Feel free to be meta, self-referential, mysterious, reflexive, reflective, algorithmic, corporal, ghostly, mythic, “within you,” aphoristic, ethereal, exhortative, inspiring, threatening, or none of the above. Rather than thinking of the pieces you’re creating as “stories” or “poems,” it may be better to think of them as “signs.” But then again, maybe not – if you’re stubborn, you’ll ignore all of this and it will still be great.
The contest is open to anyone and everyone, obviously. If you’ve worn, submitted to, or been published in the Safety Pin Review before (or even are wearing for this contest), all the better. Consider this eager encouragement to submit again.
To submit, please send submissions in the body of an email to safetypinreview [at] gmail [dot] com with the words “SPR contest” in the subject line. Please do not send attachments – the text should be simple enough that you don’t need them. Include a line introducing yourself. We like to know who’s taking the time to send work our way.
There is no entry fee, because that’s not punk at all.
To sum up: send up to three (3) unpublished pieces of no more than 75 characters each (including spaces and optional title), in plain text, to safetypinreview [at] gmail [dot] com, with the words “SPR contest” in the subject line, between November 1 and December 15, 2013 January 1, 2014.
If you have questions, please ask in the comments so that everyone can see my responses.
Please note that regular submissions are *closed* during the entry period for contest submissions (between November 1 and December 15 January 1). They will re-open after the contest ends. If you’ve been fooling around with work to send us, why not whip it into a contest submission?
There are so few words; really, there’s no excuse not to enter. We are ecstatic to read what you come up with.
Safety Pin Review 