
Requirements: Stories should be between 2,000 and 7,000 words and in English. No reprints or material posted online. No multiple or simultaneous submissions. Stories should be submitted in standard manuscript format as an attached RTF file.
Where to submit: Stories should be emailed to zubaan.antho@gmail.com. Hardcopy submissions will be ignored. Include the story-title and author name(s) in the email’s subject line. For example:
Submission: “Name of Story.” by A. N. Author
Reading period: February 14, 2010 - June 01, 2010.
Publication date: February, 2011
Payment: Rs. 1000 (~$25) plus a contributor copy.
What we are looking for: Stories that use the Ramayana in an essential and innovative way. As the anthology title suggests, the stories need to have an speculative element. We take speculative fiction to include sub-genres like magic realism, science-fiction, fantasy, new weird, slipstream, interstitial, etc.
We’ve mentioned that the Ramayana should be used in an “essential and innovative way”. By “essential,” we mean that the stories should be about the Ramayana, and not say, about the Iraq war. That being said, the Iraq war is a perfectly acceptable setting for a story about the Ramayana. Perhaps one useful test of “essential” is this: if the Ramayana had never been written, would your story lose its point?
“Innovative” means that your story manages to surprise us. Be bold. Courageous. We've read a lot of tame retellings. There are a great many versions of the Ramayana-- over three hundred according to one authoritative count-- and people have been telling and retelling this story for millennia, so surprise is a scarce resource. On the other hand, this is a constraint uniquely suited to the speculative imagination.
We are especially interested in stories with strong female characters and feminist perspectives. The Ramayana has generally emphasized male voices; it would be interesting to hear from other perspectives.
Finally, it is worth emphasizing that we care deeply about how a story is told. We’re looking for literary stories. Given a choice between an idea-rich but poorly-told story and a well-told but not-so-brilliant story, we’ll pick the well-told one. Of course, we are looking for stories with both virtues: brilliant words and brilliant ideas. The Ramayana deserves nothing less.