Call For Submissions: Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 6 (2022), due October 31, 2020

Posted on August 3, 2020by Sinclair Sexsmith

ETA: Extended deadline! December 31, 2020

The deadline for Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 6 has been extended to December 31, 2020, for Black queer women authors specifically.

Details for the call are below. Please submit your work through this Google form: http://bitly.com/blev6

Editor: Sinclair Sexsmith

Publisher: Cleis Press

Deadline: October 31, 2020 (earlier encouraged)

Payment: $50 and 1 copy of the book within 90 days of publication

Rights: non-exclusive right to publish the story in this anthology in print, ebook and audiobook form. Authors will retain copyright to their stories.

Sinclair Sexsmith is editing the next volume of Best Lesbian Erotica, and is looking for your best sexy stories about queer women.

Representations of queer women, non-binary, and trans women’s sexuality that are not as frequently seen — with ability, race, ethnicity, class, neurodiversity, ace-spectrum, age, religion, or other marginalized viewpoints — are particularly of interest.

Writers who have not previously published are encouraged. Writers of color, particularly Black writers, are encouraged.

#Ownvoices stories are encouraged and will be prioritized.

The anthology is not limited to certain kinds of sex acts. “Vanilla,” BDSM, fetish, ace, and all kinds of sensual and sexual expression are welcome. I will be looking for a wide variety of sexual identities: mommy, mistress, sir, puppy, girl, servant, etc.

I will consider a few reprints published in 2020, but prefer unpublished stories. No simultaneous submissions. No poetry or speculative fiction.

Up to two submissions per author. Stories should be between 2500-4000 words.

Submissions in English required; American English not required, but we will edit it to be in American English eventually. If there are cultural specifics, we’ll work on how to translate them into American English during the editing process.

Characters must be a minimum of 18. All stories have to be within legal guidelines, including no incest, beastiality, necrophilia, consent violations, or other illegal acts. If something illegal happens in the story, it should be within a context where it’s understood it’s illegal in some way.

No specific requirements for formatting the text, but the closer you can be to standard publishing formatting, the better for us during the editing process.

– legible, standard font (times, arial) in a typical size (12ish)

– no underlines or bold, use italics for emphasis

– no specifications for indentations & spacing, as long as it’s legible. I usually do no indents at the beginning of paragraphs and double space after paragraphs, but the final manuscript will be set up by editors at Cleis Press based on their specifications.

Please submit your work through this Google form: http://bitly.com/blev6

If it does not work to submit your story via this form, please contact Sinclair directly at sinclair@sugarbutch.net with the subject line “Best Lesbian Erotica submission” and include your story as an attachment in .doc, .docx or .rtf format (not PDF). Include the story title, your legal name, pseudonym (if applicable), 75-100 word bio, whether the story was previous published or not, email address, phone number, and mailing address.

Queries are welcome; contact sinclair@sugarbutch.net.

Published by Sinclair Sexsmith

Sinclair Sexsmith (they/them) is "the best-known butch erotica writer whose kinky, groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queers" (AfterEllen), who "is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff, and writes for all the places" (Autostraddle). Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and they are the current editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. They identify as a white non-binary butch dominant, a survivor, and an introvert, and they live outside Seattle as an uninvited settler on traditional, ancestral, & unceded Snoqualmie land.

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