This is bound to be another literary first, focusing on the urban working class and the ability to enhance one’s earning power despite often being underemployed. How do lower paid workers make ends meet? How do the unemployed survive once they’ve used up their benefits? What happens to them once they disappear from official statistics? What tactics have they developed? Is there another economic system at work that is totally outside of mainstream standards? What does the underclass and the fair-to-middling do to feed the family within a hostile environment? Are the strategies they devise parts of yet another working standard? To what extent is there an underground economy that is not exactly illegal, yet for which there is no yardstick by which to measure its effectiveness?
Given the current economic downturns and consistent losses of jobs, are the strategies and options that have long ago developed among the working poor still viable? What are they? Are they legal, extralegal or illegal? What common threads hold the underclass together? Do they bear their own ethics? How applicable are they?
The answers to these questions serve as the parameters for Street Smarts. Our target audience includes the hundreds of thousands who, like never before, are faced with new challenges – unemployment, loss of homes, debts, etc., with homelessness and public shelters ever increasingly a viable and realistic given.
Here’s an opportunity for the entire planet to hear your truth, our truth, about both our desperate and our aspirate states, straight up from the streets. This anthology will offer real life stories of how folk who have come from or find themselves suddenly at the bottom have developed their own ways and means to survive.
The editors of Street Smarts welcome you to submit your own story of survival. It can come in the form of poetry or drama, as biographical and/or fictional accounts of ways in which citizens will make ends meet – how we work a hustle or cook those meals on a shoestring budget or how we use borrowing and lending to keep that household going (even via pyramid schemes or other forms of community banking, or working the numbers racket and/or relying on the bolita).
We want to hear from freelance writers and artists, from consultants who no longer work a regular j-o-b, even from street pharmacists and drug dealers. We want to hear from those who still host Rent Parties and poker games or organize poetry readings, who rent dance halls for weekend events or loan shark their way through life. We want to hear from anyone who finds a way to cut the price down or makes use of old home remedies instead of going to the pharmacy, from those who’ve survived prisons in every way imaginable, and how they adapt to street and prison codes in order to fend for themselves.
We will consider material on any topic, in any form and according to how each contributor interprets factual events and strategies, even when couched with fictional characters. What matters most is that you’re helping to illustrate how creative humans really are, no matter what the odds against us. Artwork, photography and transcribed interviews are welcomed.
Email your submissions to Louisreyesrivera (at) aol.com in simple word format. If you have to use snail mail, please include a self-addressed stamped envelope to Louis Reyes Rivera, GPO Box 16, New York City 10116.
File Formats:
All material submitted must be the author’s original work. Use of work that was done or created by others without permission is a violation of copyright laws. Send us your best work and in simple word format! Please use your program’s spell check option or manually check your work before sending it. The editors reserve the right to make minor grammatical changes so that all materials conform to our guidelines. We want this to be a work of art both for general markets as well as for schools.
Material submission guidelines:
Poems and letters cannot be more than up to three (3) pages in length (single spaced).
Short stories, interviews and essays (political or social) should not be more than ten (10) pages in length and must be double-spaced, typewritten. Artwork and photographs should conform to a 6″ by 9″ format.
Requirements:
Please include with your submission your name/address, P.O. Box and/or e-mail along with a brief bio. Any questions or concerns about your submission can be sent to the editors at Louisreyesrivera (at) aol.com
Terms & Conditions:
A submission implies that you agree with the following terms: No submission will be returned without your inclusion of a self-addressed stamped envelope. If your work is not accepted, we will either return it in your self-addressed stamped envelope or we will discard it (and/or delete it from our computer).
Submissions may not have been published before or appeared in any other commercial publication. None of the contents may be derived from previously created documents unless specifically noted.
You agree to authorize publication of your work to appear in Street Smarts and in any manner that the editors deem appropriate to the format of the book. By submitting your work, you also grant permission for the editors to distribute it throughout the world.
You agree to hold harmless the editors and publisher from any and all claims, suits and damages based on international copyright laws, including plagiarism or unauthorized use, or any other legally related issues.
Having read the Terms & Conditions for submitting your work, you understand that these Terms constitute the basis for accepting your work and that you agree to such Terms & Conditions.
Submission Deadline:
We should have received your materials no later than January 30, 2010. Entries submitted after that date might not be considered.
SASE: We prefer that you email your submissions. If you decide to snail mail your work, include a stamped self-addressed business-sized envelope so that your work can be returned to you if it is not accepted.
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