Editor’s note: the following is a call for submissions for a new anthology from our partners at Belt Publishing.

Belt Publishing will be compiling an anthology of essays about Indianapolis in 2020 as part of our City Anthology Series.

Indianapolis is known as the Crossroads of America for the several major interstate highways that intersect the city. Is Indianapolis just another Midwestern city to fly over or pass through as we travel to bigger and better destinations, or is it a crossroads where diverse peoples and ideals converge to create a rich and vibrant cultural center?

What is Indianapolis’s identity in the 21st century? Surely, it’s more than the home of the Indianapolis 500, John Dillinger, David Letterman, Little Orphan Annie, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Kurt Vonnegut, Van Camp’s pork and beans, Prozac, and Wonder Bread.

The purpose of this anthology is to show how and what the city is in contemporary terms, and how writers reflect and unearth that in their work. We want the unique perspectives about what it means to be in Indianapolis, with an eye on history but a contemporary understanding of the place the city occupies in both reality and the imagination.

This is not a marketing piece for the Indianapolis Tourism Commission. Let’s celebrate the city, but let’s see its grit and idiosyncrasies; its nuances and imperfections; let’s see Indianapolis as the dynamic and diverse and culturally rich city that it is.

We are looking for essays, reflections, poems, and reported articles from the city that evoke the place in compelling ways and seek to provide some insight to both locals and visitors or curious outsiders into Indianapolis’s complex identity. Submissions can be related to a specific place, event (personal or historical), or personage, and must take place in or around the city. Pieces set in the immediately neighboring towns and suburbs will be considered if the material engages with the city in a meaningful way. This includes the Indianapolis metropolitan area.

Let’s keep the tributes to #18 and the vroom vrooms in check.

Submissions should retain their relevance for years to come. We are actively looking for submissions from Indianapolis’s African American, Latinx, Asian American, immigrant, and LGBTQ+ communities, so please circulate. Pieces that have a specific perspective and point of view, in which something happens, something changes, and/or something is lost or found, will be prioritized.

We will accept previously published pieces, but the author must include the original publication information and have the rights to the piece. Accepted submissions will likely be edited in coordination with the author.

The anthology will be edited by Norman Minnick (see below for more information).

Submissions are due by January 31, 2020.

To submit an entry, please:

-Include author’s full name and contact information (phone, email, address and 3-4 sentence bio).
-Indicate where the author lives/where the piece takes place (i.e. Fountain Square, Haughville, Broad Ripple, Greenwood, Brownsburg, Speedway, Beech Grove, Lawrence, etc.).
-Write “SUBMISSION” on the subject line.
-Acceptable file types: pdf, doc, docx, rtf.

Submit all entries and questions to: [email protected]

SPONSORS:  Interested in underwriting or sponsoring this book? Email Associate Publisher Dan Crissman at [email protected].

-Nonfiction essays between 300 and 500 words.
-Up to five poems.
-Space pending, we may publish long-form pieces over 2,000 words. Query first.
-No fiction, sorry.

Contributors will receive an honorarium.

Editor: Norman Minnick is the editor of the anthologies Between Water and Song: New Poets for the Twenty-First Century (White Pine Press) and Work toward Knowing: Beginning with Blake by Jim Watt (Kinchafoonee Creek Press). His collections of poetry are To Taste the Water (winner of the First Series Award from Mid-List Press) and Folly (Wind Publications). Minnick’s poems and essays have appeared widely in anthologies and journals including The Writer’s Chronicle, The Georgia Review, World Literature Today, Teachers & Writers Magazine, The Oxford American, The Columbia Review, Poetry East, Crab Orchard Review, Southern Indiana Review, and Notre Dame Review.

Cover image of Downtown Indianapolis at night. Photo by Josh Hallett (CC BY-SA 2.0).