Submission Call: WALKTHORUGH

Submission Call: WALKTHROUGH

January 28, 2023

A brief call for brief essays.

 Introducing WALKTHROUGH 

Essays From/Within/About Video Games

Some years ago,

 

Atticus Review

launched a series called "

." The idea was to run a series of essays examining songs that played an important role in authors' lives, to look at the music that has shaped our writing and ourselves. Former editor David Olimpio

: 

"The writer and scholar Albert Murray described blues music, and by extension all art, as 'survival technique.' He felt it was important to dispel the melancholy associated with the blues. The blues idiom is not about sadness. Blues is about transcendence."

Meditating on the idea of art as a survival technique, he kicked off a refreshing approach to writing about our favorite music, blending criticism with memoir but leaning toward the traditions of the essay, driven by questions about what compels us, where the music takes us, and why.

Between our three annual issues in Spring, Summer, and Winter,

Atticus Review

will hold short series for essays, criticism, and ephemera to be published on our our blog,

. Our first series will be a thematic throwback to Superunknown: How has a

video game

been more than just a work of pop culture for you, but something transcendental? How has gaming helped you survive?

To be sure, gaming may be a bit more niche than music. There are plenty of blogs, fan sites, and outlets dedicated to gaming criticism. Some newspapers have covered the video game beat, and in higher education there is a growing

(if at times cobbled together) body of video game

between English, rhetoric, pop culture, computer science, and mass media studies. All of that is fine, but for our series, we're looking for

personal engagement above all else

.

A

walkthrough

is something that gamers create once they beat a game, a recorded tour of the levels and bosses they have come to know and love that is meant to help new players if they get stuck. Give us a walkthrough of your own. Did you find yourself playing endless raids during lockdown? Did you play as a character of the opposite gender before coming out as queer? Did you spend your childhood at an arcade or finally catch every single Pokemon while undergoing chemo?

This nonfiction prompt is open to you.

Submissions will be open during the month of February, for essays between 100 and 1000 words. Selected works will be published throughout summer.

Atticus Review in February

Fee-Free Submissions

Beginning on February 1 and continuing as an ancient tradition we'll invent in a few days, we will offer fee-free submissions in fiction, poetry, and CNF on the

first day of every month

.

We are an independent journal with a small budget, and the submission fee goes toward keeping the journal running without too many error pages, but we want to be open to all writers as much as as possible.

We will also continue to have a tip jar option on our submissions, and greatly appreciate whatever rusty coins you're able to toss our way.

Submissions

On that note, we are OPEN for submissions in all categories! Poems, essays, flash fiction, short stories, flash memoir, micros, videopoems, mixed media, interviews, book reviews, you name it!

How Can We Support Our Contributors?

If you published something on

Atticus Review

or through Atticus Books and you have news you want us to celebrate, let us know on social media! We're active(ish) on

and

.

In the meantime, I hope you keep writing. The world needs it.

Peace,

Keene Short

Editor-in-Chief

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

BOOK REVIEW

The World As I Said It: The Borders of First-Person Narration in FALLING HOUR

by D.W. White

"There is the frame, the tale, the method, the madness. There is the time of the narrating and the time of narrated, a distance which births the original sin of physic distance in all first-person accounts."

NEW FROM THE ATTIC

THE VIEW FROM MAINE \\ JANUARY 

by Barbara Riddle

"There are two kinds of people in the world: those who don’t bother to keep books they’ve already read, and the rest of us."

SPECIAL CALL FOR THE ATTIC During February, we will have a special call for short essays drawing from experiences with video games, to be published in summer, 2023.

SUBMISSIONS

We are

for submissions in all genres! We are also open for book reviews, interviews, and mixed media.

SUPPORT ATTICUS!

We are able to bring you content such as this through the generous support of writers and readers like yourself. Please consider becoming a regular

today. All subscription levels include free submissions.

Our Reading List is updated each week. Go check it out!Are you a contributor to Atticus Review who'd like your book featured in the reading list? Send us an email at [email protected]. 

**For photo credits, follow links to stories.**