Thank you for considering Proximity for the publication of your true stories. We encourage the submission of original work from everyone—especially women, writers of color, and marginalized individuals, including gender-nonconforming and LGBTQ writers. We are committed to intersectionality and our founding mission.

Guidelines: Submissions must be previously unpublished (#) and submitted to Proximity for publication in one of the following categories: long-form (6,000 words maximum), mid-range (2,000 words maximum), flash (500 words maximum), or photo essay/multimedia. Multiple submissions and alternative forms of true stories are welcome and encouraged. #PleaseNote: Although we do not accept previously published work, we do make exceptions for book excerpts from books slated for publication or published no more than three years ago. ** See the Proximity website for frequently asked questions.

Issue 19 | 2018 Prize Issue — THE BODY
Editors: Carrie Kilman, Towles Kintz, Shasta Grant, and Maggie Messitt
Personal Essay Prize Deadline: August 15, 2018 August 31, 2018 (at 11:30pm EST)
Narrative Journalism Prize Deadline: August 15, 2018 September 15, 2018 (at 11:30pm EST)

Prize Judges: Hanif Abdurraqib (Essay Prize) and TBD (Narrative Journalism Prize)

For our third annual prize issue, Proximity is looking for true stories that explore the theme of THE BODY.

Our bodies hold our deepest secrets and our greatest joys. They lead us on adventures and temper our dreams; they teach us to persevere and allow us to be surprised by our own resilience; they limit and empower. Bodies can be both desecrated and exalted. They offer stories of boundless inspiration and boundless tragedy.

In this issue, we hope to explore these and other interpretations of physicality: what our bodies do for us and for others, how we use and abuse them, how we approach limitations or push ourselves to the edge of what we thought possible – or both. In what ways are our bodies being acted upon? And, in what ways do we create a collective around “the body” — the body politic?

[Narrative Journalism & Personal Essay Prize Entry Fee] $5, multiple entries accepted.

[Editors’ Choice Book Prize Entry Fee] $10

[Prize Details] Submissions will be accepted separately: Personal Essay Prize, Narrative Journalism Prize, or Editors’ Choice Book Prize. Each Prize winner will be awarded $200. Entry fees go toward this award, and any fees that push past the cost of running this contest will be put forth to pay Proximity writers in 2018. Finalists will be announced in advance. Winners will be announced in October, the day of publication. All finalists will be published in our annual anthology and a selection among them will be published in Issue 19.

Learn more about our Editorial team here.

Issue 21 | Theme: WALKING
Editor: Maggie Messitt & Guest Editor Garnette Cadogan
Deadline: January 30

More details to come!

Guest Editor GARNETTE CADOGAN is the 2017-2018 Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. His current research explores the promise and perils of urban life, the vitality and inequality of cities, and the challenges of pluralism. He writes about culture and the arts for Freeman’s, Literary Hub, New York Review of Books, and others. He is the editor-at-large of Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas (co-edited by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro) and is at work on a book on walking.

Founding Editor MAGGIE MESSITT is passionate about narratives most storytellers pass over and places most people will never visit. She spent eight years in South Africa as a freelance journalist, newspaper and magazine editor, and the director of a writing school for women. Most recently, her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Teaching Tolerance, River Teeth, and elsewhere. Longlisted for the 2016 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award, The Rainy Season is her first book. She is currently the National Director of Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project, teaches in the Goucher College MFA program, and is finishing her next book, a hybrid of investigation and memoir. She splits her time between Pittsburgh and Brooklyn. (@maggiemessitt)