COLOMBIAN EDITION 2021 – FINAL CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS AND WRITER ANNOUNCEMENT

We announced in April this year that we are pleased to announce a special upcoming Colombian Edition of the magazine to showcase Colombia’s literary, artistic and historical culture. The Colombian Edition will be printed in English for a London launch, while a version will also be printed in Spanish, to be launched in Colombia. This is a final call for submissions, so please ensure that you submit your work no later than the 22nd October 2021 to be considered for the Colombian Edition. 

We are interested in Non-Fiction (Essays), Short Fiction and Poetry of the highest literary quality, from a diverse group of Colombian writers and international writers. In particular, we are seeking to discover material which has not yet been published in a book or major national newspaper. 

Our guest editor for the Colombian Edition is Ella Windsor. Ella writes about arts and culture in Latin America for The London Magazine. She has lived in Colombia as well as other countries in the region. She also works closely with various Latin American companies and initiatives. 

For writers currently involved in the special edition, please see under ‘Writers Announced’ below. 

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Submission Guidelines 

In order to be considered for the Colombian Edition, please be sure to submit your work no later than 22nd October 2021.

All submissions must be in English. The magazine is happy to arrange for translation where requested or to cover translations arranged by writers with their selected translators at a rate of 10p per word. If you are a translator submitting a translated text please be sure to have an author’s permission for your translation to be published. Please also send Spanish texts for our Spanish version of the edition. 

Please send material that has not yet been published in any books or major newspapers. 

Non-Fiction/Essays: Any writing that reflects on Colombian art, literature, culture, environment and history will be considered. Memoir pieces will also be considered. Please send Non-Fiction submissions in English. They should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words.

Short Fiction: Above all we look for elegance in style, structure and characterisation. We are open to both experimental and traditional forms, although we do not normally publish genre fiction such as science fiction or fantasy writing, or erotica. Please send Short Fiction submissions in English. They should be no more than 2,000 words.

Poetry: Poetry should display a commitment to the ultra-specificities of language and show a refined sense of simile and metaphor. The structure should be tight and exact. Please send poetry submissions in English, as well as any original Spanish texts, which we will also publish alongside the English translations. Poems should be no longer than 40 lines.

Please email submissions, with the reference ‘Colombian Edition’ in the subject header, to: submissions@thelondonmagazine.org

Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please do not duplicate material and please notify us if your submission is accepted elsewhere.

The editorial team will edit your piece, sometimes extensively. Our editors will work with you to craft something that is the right tone, length, and quality for The London Magazine. The editor has the final say on the title and the final proof, although we endeavour to take into account your preferences where appropriate.

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Writers Announced

The London Magazine is delighted to announce the following writers who are confirmed for the Colombian Edition.

CAROLINA SANIN
Carolina Sanín was born in Bogotá. She is the author of the novels Todo en otra parte (2005), Los niños (2014) and Tu cruz en el cielo desierto (2020), the book of short stories Ponqué y otros cuentos (2010), the humorous books Yosoyu (2013) and Alto rendimiento (2016), the books for children Dalia (2010) and La gata sola (2018), the biographical essay Alfonso X, el Rey Sabio (2009), the critical anthology Pasajes de Fernando González (2015), the essay El ojo de la casa (2019) and the hybrid book Somos luces abismales (2018). In 2019 she presented the performance Actos de la ignorancia at the Salón Nacional de Artistas in Colombia, and played the lead role in Litigante, by Franco Lolli, a film that opened the Semaine de la Critique at Cannes. Since 2021 she has hosted a discussion programme for a public TV channel in Bogotá. She earned a Ph.D. in Hispanic Literature from Yale University. She has taught literature at SUNY Purchase, the Universidad de Los Andes and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She has been a columnist for El Espectador, semana.com, Semana Sostenible, Credencial, Vice and Arcadia. The anthology Pasar fijándose (2021) is a collection of some of her best columns.

JOHN JAIRO JUNIELES
Until he was seven he thought his name was ‘Damn boy, get down!’ At eight he loved to shout from windows to scare people, at nine he started throwing things at them, and at ten he liked to throw himself out the window, into the street. He was born in Sincé-Colombia (1970), grew up in Cartagena de Indias, and now lives in Bogotá. In 2007 he was chosen by Hay Festival to take part in the project Bogotá 39: The 39 writers most representative of Latin American literature. His most recent book is the novel The man who talked of Marlon Brando (Editorial Planeta, 2020). He has four books of stories, five of poetry and he also writes chronicles and scripts.

 

CRISTINA BENDEK
Cristina Bendek is an author from the Caribbean. She was born in the island of San Andrés in 1987. In 2018, her first novel, Los cristales de la sal (Salt Crystals) won the National Award Elisa Mújica for novels in Colombia. The book has been translated into Portuguese (Moinhos, 2021), Dutch (Aurora Boreal, 2020) and will come out in English in 2022 with Charco Press, which will also launch the novel in Spanish for the North American readership. Fragments of her work have also appeared in German. Cristina is also a journalist but spends her time researching Caribbean literature and writing.

 

MARGARITA GARCíA ROBAYO
Margarita García Robayo (Cartagena, Colombia, 1980) is the author of three novels, a book of autobiographical essays and several collections of short stories, including Worse Things, which obtained the prestigious Casa de las Américas Prize in 2014. Her work has appeared in several anthologies such as Región: cuento político latinoamericano (Political Latin American Short Stories, 2011) and Childless Parents (2014). Her books have been praised in Latin America as well as in Spain, and have been translated into French, Portuguese, Italian, Hebrew and Chinese. Holiday Heart was her second book to appear in English after the very successful Fish Soup.

 

 

VELIA VIDAL ROMERO
Velia Vidal Romero loves to read with others and for others. She feels that the region of Chocó, Colombia, and Bahía Solano in particular, is her place in the world. This may explain why she became the founder and director of the Corporación Educativa y Cultural Motete, an organization that seeks to close development gaps in the department of Chocó, by generating encounters in cultural and educational spaces around art, reading and cuisine. Motete organizes the Festival of Reading and Writing of Chocó (FLECHO). She won an honourable mention as part of the first cohort of the Certificate of Afro-Latin American Studies from the Center for Afro-Latin American Studies at Harvard University and is the first winner of the publication grant for Afro-Colombian, Black, Raizal and Palenquera authors from the Ministry of Culture of Colombia. She held a scholarship from the Pacific Diploma in Creative Writing from the Instituto Caro y Cuervo and the Fondo Acción, enabling her to write the children’s story “Bajo el yarumo”, which forms part of the publication Maletín de relatos pacíficos. In 2019 she participated in the artistic project Al otro lado del Istmo, by Magdalena Wallport and Elkin Calderón, in the context of which she wrote a text published in the book Oír Somos río. Aguas de estuario is her first novel.

 

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Due to volume, we regret that we are unable to respond to submissions individually unless your piece is accepted for publication in this issue. If you haven’t heard back from us within 8 weeks, please assume that your submission has not been accepted on this occasion.

Thank you and we wish you the best of luck with your submission. 

 

 

 

 

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