Taken from Vignette Press:
mook -
1. A bound hybrid publication issued in a series.
2. Not quite a magazine, not quite a book.
3. A collection of surprising, unconventional new writing.
fat -
1. The ester of glycerol and one, two, or three fatty acids.
2. Obesity; corpulence.
3. The best or richest part.
Vignette Press is seeking new work for the latest in its acclaimed series of mooks. After The Sex Mook, The Death Mook, and Geek Mook, comes Fat Mook.
In a climate where fat bodies are ridiculed, controlled, and feared, Fat Mook seeks to expand the ways we think about fat. We’re looking for work that says something both new and real about fat – work that is accessible but makes us think, that goes to hard places and takes us through them, that is ugly and beautiful and changes the way we breathe. We’re keen on art, photography, poetry, memoir, fiction, comics, non-fiction, and other innovative forms – surprise us!
We are looking for work that goes beyond stereotypes and broadens the existing take on fat. To this end, we particularly encourage contributions from people of colour, queer folk, gender diverse folk, disabled folk, and people from around the world. We also encourage submissions from men, as most fat work is written by women, but we welcome all submissions – we want to read your work.
Fat Mook will be the first collection of creative work on fat to be published in Australia.
Possible topics include but are in no way limited to:
- Aesthetics – beauty, ugliness, the specificity of the fat body
- Fashioning fat – clothing and adornment
- Gender – identity and presentation
- Food – eating while fat, the care and feeding of the fat body, fat vegans and other alternative foodways
- Health and illness – fat athletes, finding movement, dealing with illness
- Sexuality – sex, love, dating, and attraction
- Activism – community, performance, DIY, resisting anti-fat messages
- Space – built environments, safe spaces, comfort
- Fat characters – write one that’s new and different and real; fat lives
- Alternate realities and imagined worlds
Submission guidelines:
- Prose submissions should be a maximum of 3,000 words, however shorter submissions are encouraged.
- Use 12 point, Times New Roman font, 1.5 spacing (unless your writing is in another form, such as a comic).
- Margins should be 2.5cm at top and bottom and 3.25cm at left and right
- On the first page please include your name (Last Name, First Name), title of the piece, genre (eg Fiction, Essay, Memoir, Reportage, Poetry), word count and a 50-100 word bio (not in a separate file).
- When referencing or referring to books in your piece, please incorporate them into the body of your work. If in doubt, use Harvard referencing style (as at http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/recite/). We will not include footnotes in the book; writers should include information in the body of the text.
- Artworks should reproduce well in black and white.
- Poetry and prose should be sent as a single Word (preferred) or rtf file.
- Artworks should initially be sent in .jpg format with a maximum file size of 200kb. If selected, we will contact you for high quality files. Artist bios should be sent as a separate Word or rtf file.
- Your submission should be emailed to fatmook@vignettepress.com.au. Files should be named with the author’s surname followed by an underscore and the title of the work, eg, ‘Lee & Wykes_Fat Mook.doc’.
Vignette Press appreciates the guts, labour and dedication required to produce good writing and art. Unfortunately, at the moment, we are not in position to express this monetarily. Each contributor will receive a complimentary copy of the Fat Mook.
Submissions close on 1 April 2012
Chub love,
Jackie Wykes and Jennifer Lee, Fat Mook Editors
Amy Espeseth, Publisher, Vignette Press
Follow us on Twitter @vignettepress and @fat_mook. Like us on Facebook: Vignette Press. Befriend us in real life.
Have you hear about Chub Republic? It’s this little group I’m involved with, and we’re hosting a plus-size clothes swap in a few weeks!
It’s on Sunday 11 September at Loophole Community Centre, 670 High Street, Thornbury. You can drop off clothes between 11am-1pm, and then the real fun goes from 2pm-5pm!
Chub Republic Presents a Fabulous Fatshion Extravaganza!
Well here’s a clothes swap just for you! Drop off your pre-loved plus-sized garments between 11am and 1pm, then enjoy the Thornbury shops and cafes until 2pm, when doors open and a whole new world of sartorial brilliance will be yours.
Entry is $5, after which the clothes are FREE! All genders are welcome, and drinks and baked goods will be available.
Follow us on Twitter: @ChubRepublicMel
Join us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/175134172549558/
Check out our website: http://www.chubrepublic.au.com/blog/
And reblog us on Tumblr: http://chubrepublicmelb.tumblr.com/
Call for Papers
Tentative title: Queering Fat Embodiment
Type: Edited book
Submission deadline: January 15th, 2012
***DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 31 JANUARY 2012***
Contacts and editors:
Samantha Murray Samantha.murray@mq.edu.au (Main contact)
Cat Pausé c.pause@massey.ac.nz
Jackie Wykes wykesj@unimelb.edu.au
Scope:
Against the backdrop of the ever-growing medicalisation and pathologisation of fatness, the field of Fat Studies has emerged in recent years to offer an interdisciplinary critical interrogation of the dominant medical models of health, to give voice to the lived experience of fat bodies, and to offer critical insights into, and investigations of, the ethico-political implications of the cultural meanings that have come to be attached to fat bodies. This focus on the regulation, discipline and representation of fat bodies make it critically invaluable to the advancement of scholarship on embodiment.
This edited collection seeks to publish recent scholarship that embraces ‘queering’ as a mode of critical engagement in examining fat embodiment. Queer is a heterogeneous and multidisciplinary practice aimed at ‘bringing forth’ and thus denaturalising the taken for granted, the invisible, the normalized. This collection seeks to challenge and destabilise existing ideas of fat and fat embodiment both outside of and within the emerging field of Fat Studies. This volume will bring together scholarship from various disciplines in order to examine the ways in which fat embodiment is lived, experienced, regulated and (re)produced across a range of cultural sites and contexts. In queering established ideas about fat bodies, and presenting challenging inquiries/inqueeries into these notions, this collection will represent an innovative and critically invaluable contribution to the advancement of scholarship on fatness, and indeed on embodiment more generally.
Topics may include but are not limited to:
• fat activism and embodiment
• fat mental and physical health
• queer(y)ing ‘hard data’ on fatness/obesity science
• queer(y)ing health policies related to fat
• cross-cultural or global constructions of fat bodies
• cultural, historical, or philosophical meanings of fat and fat bodies
• fat embodiment in literature, film, music, nonfiction, and the visual arts
• fat as queering sex, beauty, gender, and other embodied performances
• fat sexuality
• fat materialities
• fat and space
• fat and biopolitics
• fat and citizenship
• fat and neoliberalism
• fatness and consumption
Please note that we are already in the process of completing a proposal to submit to publishers, which we will complete based on the submissions we receive. We have had some preliminary interest from publishers, but as yet, we have not secured a contract.
Full paper submissions are due January 15, 2012. Articles should range between 15 and 20 double-spaced pages. Please send submissions, along with an abstract of your paper and a brief biographical sketch, directly to Samantha.murray@mq.edu.au.
ETA: There’s been a few queries regarding what types of submissions we’re looking for. We’re happy to consider non-academic submissions which reflect on the lived experiences of fat embodiment, but they should be intellectually robust and engage with relevant literature.
Well, it’s been a good long while. And this isn’t a ‘real’ post so much as a drive-by thank you to all the folks who came along to Cherchez La Femme on Tuesday night to talk about fat and feminism with us. Y’all were awesome and amazing, and it was great to have the opportunity for a public discussion about fat in such an open forum.
I’m also in awe of my co-panellists, Jenny, Elizabeth, and Lili, who were all incredibly articulate, generous, and damn funny to boot. And of course massive thanks to Karen, who put the whole evening together. It was a really fantastic night, and it’s reinvigorated my enthusiasm for fat activism and community.
I also wanted to post a few links to some resources for folks who might be new to fat acceptance (or just looking for new things to read).
First, some Melbourne fat groups you should check out:
Chub Republic - a newly formed group of rad fatties intent on changing the world through dance, fashion, and other joyful things. Check out our inaugural Fabulous Fatshion Extravaganza on Sunday 11 September.
Aquaporko Melbourne – a fat femme (and femme-friendly) synchronised swim team.
We also mentioned (and in some cases, forgot to mention) a bunch of books. These are a great place to start, but there’s plenty more out there. Omission from this list is in no way condemnation; it’s necessary to get this post up.:
Screw Inner Beauty: Lessons from the Fatosphere, Kate Harding & Marianne Kirby (You can also read “The Fantasy of Being Thin” on the Shapely Prose archive. Do it, it’s brilliant.)
Fat!So? Marilyn Wann
Revolting Bodies: The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity, Kathleen LeBesco
Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression, edited by Kathleen LeBesco & Jana Evans Braziel
The Fat Studies Reader, edited by Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay
The ‘Fat’ Female Body, Samantha Murray
Health At Every Size, Linda Bacon
Big Big Love, Hanne Blanke (NB: A new edition is due out in September)
Fat & Proud, Charlotte Cooper
Also some blogs:
You should definitely read Elizabeth & Lili’s blogs (linked above), but there’s a whole big wide fatosphere out there. Here are a few places to get started (ditto with omissions here):
Notes from the Fatosphere feed (one of a number of fat-activists feeds)
Happy reading!
So, I’m in the USA. I’ve been here for 6 weeks now. I meant to write about it sooner. MUCH sooner. I meant to write before I even left, but, as usual, study/planning/life/tv watching got in the way. And then actual travel got in the way. But it’s been amazing. AMAZING.
I started in New York, where I met (and posed for) the incredible Substantia Jones of Adipositivity. I went to the Breaking Boundaries: Body Politics and the Dynamics of Difference at Sarah Lawrence University, where I met the famous Marilyn Wann, the fabulous Zoe and Arun, and one of my all-time academic heroes, the fantastically brilliant Katie LeBesco, and too many others to mention. I went to Re/Dress and found incredible vintage dresses (the amazing vintage Lane Bryant in this video). I got to meet the ferocious Tauret, who is incredibly sweet and wonderful and took me shopping at Forever 21 (I have a whole other post I want to write about fat girl retail in the US). I met Polianarchy and went to Rebel Cupcake and explored New York City and it was amazing.
I went to the University of Connecticuit in Storrs to look at the Mayer Collection of Fat Liberation in their archives. It’s an incredible collection of letters and materials from the early fat liberation movement. I also went to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard in Boston, where they have some more collections of early fat lib materials. At both archives I met other researchers who were looking at the same collections – fat grad students are taking over the world!
I also got to meet my long-time blogging hero, Lesley Kinzel, and hang out with some other Boston Fats, who were some of the most generous and welcoming people in the world. I went to Lafayette, Indianapolis and met Mychii, who is brilliant and driven and we had wonderful conversations about fat and fat studies and teaching and activism.
I went to Portland and got to meet Stacey Bias, who took me to a big fat queer cabaret. I’m currently in San Francisco, where I’ve spent time looking through Judy Freespirit‘s papers at the GLBT Historical Society, and hanging out with Marilyn Wann. I’m about to get ready to head over to Oakland to see the spectacular Ladymonster perform tonight, and tomorrow I’m off to Fatshion!…Turn to the left! before The Socialist arrives to spend my birthday week with me.
After that, I’m off to the PCA/ACA Conference, which has an awesome Fat Studies area. I get to meet Abby Lentz who does amazing fat girl yoga. And I get to meet Hanne Blank, whose book Big Big Love changed my life (keep an eye out for the new edition, which I think is coming out later this year. I also highly recommend her erotic!). And finally, I head back to NYC for the Fat Girl Flea.
In short: This is truly the Fatty Dream Tour (TM).
I’m not writing this just to name-drop (although I am completely thrilled to have met so many amazing people!).
I’m writing this because I’ve always been scared of travelling as a fat person – of the physical inconveniences, yes, (and there have been some), but mostly the social isolation. I didn’t do the youthful travel-as-right-of-passage for that reason (well, that and having no means to afford it). I’ve always had the fear – the expectation – of social rejection, of not fitting in, because of my fatness (and it’s not an unfounded expectation; there’s a long history and plenty of evidence). And while I’ve been friendly enough with my hostel roommates, I haven’t made any real connections that would be socially sustaining (which I’ve no doubt is partly a function of age and interest, as much as size and socialisation).
What has happened, though, is that I’ve found fat community on the other side of the world and felt immediately welcome, understood, and connected. I’ve had the audacity to ask people to spend time with me, and they have all, every single one of them, not only said yes, but gone out of their way to welcome and accomodate me.
What I find most remarkable is that this trip is happening – is motivated, enabled, and made so incredibly wonderful – not inspite of my being a fatty, but emphatically because of it.
To have grown up my whole life being bullied for my size, feeling isolated, unloveable, and unworthy because of my fat, to have never been able to fit in, it is truly remarkable to me that it’s the thing that has opened up whole new worlds of friendship, intellectual inquiry, love, and awesome adventure to me. It’s especially remarkable given the efforts of an increasingly fat-phobic society to convince everyone that fat people can’t have love or joy or mobility or excitement. This whole trip has been a big fuck you to that idea.
