Call For Submissions: How Are You Celebrating The Strangest Valentine’s Day Ever?
Much has changed since Valentine’s Day 2020. A year ago, couples were celebrating in restaurants and theaters, without masks or concern. Parents were finding babysitters for their kids, so they could enjoy a night out. And singles were free to seek refuge from the holiday in bars or with a night of what remained, at the time, rare and luxurious self-care.
Now we’re going on a year cooped up in our homes. Singles have endured unending isolation. Couples have found their relationships tested by forced togetherness — not to mention unnatural pressures such as having school-aged children at home all day. All of us have suffered loss, fear, unrest, unemployment, or anxiety. And it’s not over; the future remains uncertain.
And yet, love remains essential, a thing we both rely on and fight for, key to our survival — perhaps now more than ever.
Valentine’s Day 2021, then, finds all of us in a weird place — maybe not in a mood for Hallmark cards and cheesy movies, but as in need of love and its fortifying, reorienting power as we’ve ever been.
So, how are you spending the holiday? If you’re celebrating, how? If you’re ignoring it, why? What does the arrival, opportunity, or burden of Valentine’s Day 2021 — bogged down as it is with all the strange baggage of what’s been, for many of us, the worst year we can remember — mean to you, in your unique context? What should it mean? Should we all agree to skip on the holiday this year? Or should we embrace it? Why? How should we celebrate love in a time of contagion?
These are a few of the questions we’re hoping writers will consider as part of this year’s Valentine’s Day Call for Submissions. If you’re a PS writer, any time before Sunday, February 14, send us work that answers one or some combination of the questions above. (If you’re not a PS writer, pitch us at dan@newvoices.co.) Send us fiction, poetry, essays, memoir — whichever form does the trick — with the tag #Vday2021.
We’ll feature our favorites on the homepage from now through the holiday, and promote them all weekend long through our social channels. (And feel free to get carried away a bit. What has this year meant for love? How has it changed our understanding of loneliness? How has it changed the way we relate to one another? There’s so much to mine here. And this is a great opportunity to do it.)
We hope you’re staying healthy out there. We can’t wait to read your work.
Best,
Dan, Tre, Kay, and Scott Muska
Some of our faves from January:
Tre L. Loadholt, Waiting for an Apology That Will Never Come
John Gorman, Keep the Lights On
Felicia C. Sullivan, You Can Stop Telling Me How to Live My Life Now
Jessica Wildfire, What We Call “Dating” Teeters on the Brink of Extinction
Michael Thompson, How to be Utterly Fascinating Without Saying Much at All
Brianna Wiest for Thought Catalog, One Day You Will Look Back on This Time, and All You Will See is Magic
Scott Muska, On Our First Date We Talk About Aliens
David Valdes, What It’s Like to Fall in Love in a Pandemic
Andrew Jazprose Hill, When Grief Sneaks Up On You, Don’t Forget About the Antidote
Debbie Weiss, Ending the One-Upmanship That is Middle-Aged Dating
Lynn Shattuck, I Threw Screen Time Limits Out the Window, and My Kids Are Okay
TDO Timothy, 30 Days of Stew: A Naija Wife’s Reflection
Carlyn Beccia, What Do Women Really Want? Here are the Physical Traits We Care About (According to Science)
Barry Davret, Should You Tell A “Friend” You’re Actually In Love With Them?
Ayodeji Awosika, 5 Healthy Mindsets to Have Before Getting Into a Relationship
Andrew Knott, Despite the Darkness, My Little Flock Flies in Formation
Kelly Eden, The Guilt of Being Chronically Ill
Jodi Rempel, 7 Words Later, My Partner & I Will Never Argue The Same Way Again
Erika Anne Sauter, Finding Solace Inside of Billy Joel’s Vienna
Fiction & Poetry
Jim Latham, End of the World, According to the Moon
Walter Bowne, Socrates of Rittenhouse Square
Viggy Hampton, MPH, The Tinder Chronicles: The Guy Who Loved Shoes
Jack Herlocker, Nerd Romance — Postscript #2, Part 2
