Themed Issues
Info & Guidelines
Each month, we will release an issue featuring work in response to a specific theme alongside general issues. A different guest editor will choose each month's theme and curate the work featured. The deadline for each month will be the 15th of the previous month (ex: January 2020's submissions would be due December 15, 2019).
Please follow these guidelines specifically. All submissions should receive an automatic email reply to confirm that your submission made it to the right place. If you do not receive this automatic email, please double-check your submission (especially the subject line) and resubmit as necessary
- Send one (1) piece of writing (regardless of genre - unless genre is specified in the theme) that responds to the monthly theme attached as a Word document or PDF file
- Do NOT submit more than once to a given month, but feel free to submit to multiple months simultaneously
- Send all submissions to goldwalkmagATgmailDOTcom with the subject line that appears within your chosen theme's description (please do NOT write anything else in the subject line as some submissions are getting misfiled)
- Please address the guest editor by name in your cover letter as this will help us organize any misplaced submissions (and it's just nice!)
Golden Walkman seeks and will prioritize work from underrepresented voices. If you belong to a group that is underrepresented, please put UnderRep + MONTHSub (ex: UnderRepAugustSub) as your subject line
Previous Themed Issues
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This playlist includes all the Themed Issues we've published so far. Continue scrolling to listen to individual issues and to submit to our current themes
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January Guest Editor: Anum Sattar
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Theme: Survivor
from Anum Sattar: Please listen to “Survivor” by Destiny Child (duh), "Gloria” by Laura Branigan, “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor, “Holding our for a Hero” by Bonnie Taylor, “Stand by You” by Rachel Platten, “The Greatest” by Sia, “Praying” by Kesha, “You Say” by Lauren Daigle and “What a Feeling” by Irene Cara for inspiration. Of course, you can listen to any song you like, (I am not a tyrant or an untamed shrew), but please add the link to the song along with your submission.
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February Guest Editor: Kolleen Carney Hoepfner
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Theme: 90s Pop Culture Realness
from Kolleen Carney Hoepfner: The 90s. From glam rock to Kurt Cobain to Beavis and Butthead to Smashmouth to Armageddon... so much pop culture in such a few short years. Wow me with your favorite 90s sensations.
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April Guest Editor: Camille Wanliss
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Theme: Isola
from Camille Wanliss: Isola, when translated to English, means "island." It's also the root word for isolation. This month, we're exploring what it means to be islanded - geographically and metaphorically. Whether your piece takes place on a tropical island, the isle of Manhattan, or relates to moments of feeling marooned, stranded, and cast adrift, we want to hear from you.
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May Guest Editor: Benjamin S. Grossberg
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Theme: Rehab
from Benjamin S. Grossberg: Noun or verb? A physical place—a facility—or the process that happens there. Or a state of mind. Old cars, old buildings, injured or addicted bodies. Amy Winehouse or This Old House? Tell us about your experience with the focused, sometimes extended, and often breathtakingly painful experience of rehab. Its frustrations, inspirations, challenges, and those moments when it felt like—yes—you had finally come through. And also those moments when coming through fell through.
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June Guest Editor: Luisa Caycedo-Kimura
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Theme: Renewal
from Luisa Caycedo-Kimura: Re-new-al: to make something new again, to start again, give something a second life by making it better, to revive, to shed an outer layer and replace it with something better, to lift the spirit, to fix something that is broken, to restore, renovate, refresh, a shedding of what is broken, a rebirth, a revival. This could refer to a garden, a structure, a mind, a political system, a new perspective, a relationship, a person’s health, an environment, etc.
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July Guest Editor: K.T. Landon
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Theme: Siblings
from K.T. Landon: Our siblings are our first friends, our fiercest rivals, our protectors, our responsibility. We know them before language or memory, and they know intimately parts of our lives that are inaccessible to anyone else. Contemporary poets like Kamilah Aisha Moon, Roger Reeves, and Natalie Diaz have explored this complicated relationship movingly in their work. This month we’re interested in poems that delve into the closeness and complexity of what are, for many, our longest relationships.
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August Guest Editor: Joey Gould
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Theme: Fruits of the Earth
As a produce clerk, Joey has a deep connection to what grows & what sustains. Send them your tomato villanelles, your odes to Smartfood, your free verse apple slices! As the theme title suggests, Joey's aesthetic is earthy & old testament. BIPOC & LGBT+/Queer writers please submit; everyone needs to eat!
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September Guest Editor: Chen Chen
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Theme: Why Bother?
from Chen Chen: The title for this theme comes from Sean Thomas Dougherty's stunning short poem "Why Bother?" The poem is an ars poetica or manifesto on why continue to write, in one sentence: "Because right now, there is someone / out there with / a wound / in the exact shape / of your words." (Full poem with proper formatting here). Why do you.continue to write? Why have you continued to write? I'm particularly interested in work that explores writing during the pandemic. What has compelled you to the page, to language? How has writing changed for you in 2020 and 2021? I'm looking for work that is surprising in its diction and syntax, as well as emotionally grounded (writing with heart!) and socially engaged (writing that understands how art is inseparable from history and the political).
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October Guest Editor: William Fargason
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Theme: Elegy
from William Fargason: The history of writing about death is a long and varied one. But what does this tradition look like in the twenty-first century? How has the elegy changed recently? Give us poems about death without easy answers. Give us experimental poems, traditional poems, or somewhere in-between. Give us the particulars of death that populate that inconsolable landscape.
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November Guest Editor: Alex Charalambides
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Theme: Youth Spoken Word Poetry
from Alex Charalambides: As a 15 year plus mentor and youth advocate in the spoken word or slam poetry scene, I've grown infinitely as a human because I chose to listen to work from teens who are not "the next" but were very much the now! We'll take an incredible spin through some of the most incredible music sung out loud in poems that challenge the status quo!
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January Guest Editor: Kelly Boyker
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Theme: Dystopia
Featuring: Daniel Priest, Ren Ellis, Sara Cahill Marron, Roberta Beary, and Risa Denenberg |
February Guest Editor: Brendan Walsh
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Theme: Reverence
Featuring: Cal Freeman, Hibah Shabkhez, Robert R. Bensen, Lynne Shapiro, and Purbasha Roy |
March Guest Editor: Simeon Berry
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Theme: Buyer's Remorse
Featuring: Fritz Ward and Adriana Cloud |
April Guest Editor: Amorak Huey
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Theme: Parents & Children
Featuring: Grace Gardiner, Devon Marsh, Katie Manning, Micah Chatterton, Elizabeth Cantwell, Todd Dillard, and Gina Armstrong |
May Guest Editor: Gloria Mindock
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Theme: Atrocities
Featuring: Anne Pluto, Kim Malinowski, Brad Rose, Michael Daley, Nina Rubinstein Alonso, Doug Holder, Dana R. Rowe, Vincent Dorio, John Cuetara, Kelly McQuain, Jeannie E. Roberts, Ed Meek, and Mark Pawlak |
June Guest Editor: Sandra Marchetti
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Theme: Sound Work
Featuring: Monica Barron, Jen Karetnik, Awil Onuag, Ed Granger, and Stephen Scott Whitaker |
July Guest Editor: W. Todd Kaneko
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Theme: Ancestors, Ghosts, Listen
Featuring: Jacqueline Boucher, Jai Dulani, Kimberly Povloski, Steve Mueske, Linda Chavers, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, Kelli Russell Agodon, Sharon Suzuki-Martinez, AE Hines, Amit Majmudar, Angela Maria Spring, Summer J. Hart, Fatima Malik, and Laraine Herring |
August Guest Editor: Felicia Connolly
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Theme: Metamorphosis
Featuring: Maximillian Singh Gill ("The Trouble with Mustard Greens") and Judy Klass ("The Child is the Mother of the Woman") Surrogate Readers: Shubhra Prakash ("The Trouble with Mustard Greens") and Abby LeRoy ("The Child is the Mother of the Woman") |
September Guest Editor: Beverly Army Williams
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Theme: Shadow
Featuring: Sayuri Ayers ("Cloak of Skins"), Wilda Morris ("Walking Up Canal Street in San Miguel de Allende"), and Roy Duffield ("Some confusion over what Peter Pan syndrome might be") |
October Guest Editor: Woody Woodger
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Theme: Gender Body Horror
Featuring: Judith Pratt ("Exploitation of Fat"), Alex Andy Phuong ("Gender Body Horror"), and Jennifer Met ("Uncanny Means Unknowable, but You Kinda Know (Especially When Dating a Wannabe Entomologist)") |
November Guest Editor: Trish Hopkinson
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Theme: In Response
Featuring: Rikki Santer ("Double Vanitas"), Kate J Wilson ("The Impossibility of Love"), Pat Phillips West ("View of the Universe: Stellar Nebula"), Joyce Hayden ("Deliberate"), Koss ("Colleen Does the DIA - Rivera - Kahlo Show"), Susan Weaver ("Benedicion for Armando Passy"), Mary Elder Jacobsen ("In One Mother's Voice at Moth-Hour"), Nancy Jorgensen ("A Minor Monster"), and Barbara Tyler ("Miles Davis") |
December Guest Editor: Nancy Antle
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Theme: The Future
from Nancy Antle: Gaze into your crystal ball and write stories/poems about the future -- the day after tomorrow or next year; ten years, or hundreds of years from now. What will the earth and humanity look like? Will daily life be the same/better/worse or will humans be extinct in the future you envision? I love narratives about this topic and have read many. I've enjoyed doom and gloom stories about the future as well as lighter more humorous takes on what "tomorrow" looks like. So, follow your vision wherever it takes you but keep in mind I'll be looking for unusual tropes and voices -- no cliches, please.
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Other Submissions
- General//Any subject//Year-Round
- Tapes From The Outside//Work in response to current events//Year-Round
- Dialogue Submissions//Work in response to a specific piece of music//Every few months
- (Audio)Book Submissions//Book-length writing//April-June & October-December