Black Sun Lit is now accepting submissions for our first issue of Vestiges, Ex-Stasis.
As literature feels an increasing need to justify itself, its relationship with beauty becomes ever more tenuous. The preoccupation with literature’s usefulness has severed its connection with the gratuitous and the unproductive, with terror and reckless eros—in short, with the realm of the aesthetic.
For our inaugural issue, we will be looking for an aestheticism that is concerned with beauty as a very particular experience: that of the limit which defines us, which gives us form by delineating the safe boundaries where life manages its transactions, which moderates our behaviors and demands our obedience. We view beauty as a breakdown of these borders by an intensification of sensations, and from and through beauty we experience the decomposition of the body, the frenzy of copulation, the dissolute glory of the sacred, the decay of life, and the disappearance of existence. We intend to explore this relationship between literature and beauty with writing born from a horrible wakefulness that brings freedom to the depths of a restless aesthetic, that concentrates on a beauty outside of itself, a beauty of irregularity, abandonment and betrayal, a beauty that demands darkness to command its ornament, a beauty that leads us to the ecstatic and the unbounded.
We hope Ex-Stasis will lay the foundation for all future issues, and want to encourage our contributors to construct work that not only comments on the theme of the issue but which celebrates literature in all of its flaws. To mark our initial imprint into the literary community, we will be awarding monetary compensation to the authors of manuscripts that best represent Black Sun Lit as a literary publication and, more importantly, that give expression to our belief that literature is first and foremost an art form.
For consideration, please submit either one piece of unpublished fiction/prose (not exceeding 5,000 words), up to five pieces of verse/poetry (in one document, indicating the start of each new piece), or one essay (not exceeding 5,000 words). For cover letter guidelines click here.
Thank you for allowing us to review your work. We look forward to reading.