A Third Space, working alongside CHEVS, is now accepting submissions for Mismemories: Contemporary Writing from Queer West-African Voices, a forthcoming anthology developed under the organization’s Long Story Project. The call is open to LGBTQIA+ writers producing fiction and nonfiction that engage with love, desire, class, and ambition, and with the many ways queerness in West Africa exists in conversation with the region’s evolving social and cultural terrain. The editors are drawn to stories that push back against familiar ideas of what queerness looks like and that reveal worlds beyond the ones readers assume they already know.

Particular encouragement is being extended to writers from countries whose literary voices have long sat at the margins of the region’s wider literary establishment, among them Benin, Mali, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Cabo Verde, Niger, Togo, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Liberia. Eligibility is restricted to LGBTQIA+ individuals aged 18 and older who are both from and currently living in a West African nation, and writers may submit under a pseudonym if they prefer to remain anonymous.

Each submission should take the form of either fiction or nonfiction (not both) with standard entries falling between 1,500 and 3,000 words, and novellas permitted up to 8,000–12,000 words. French-language submissions are accepted as well, so long as they’re accompanied by a brief descriptor in English. Every writer whose work makes it into the finished anthology will be paid a $100 honorarium, and any piece later adapted for use in A Third Space’s other programming will carry separate compensation.

Once assembled, Mismemories will live on a dedicated micro-site and appear in a limited print edition produced in collaboration with Elekere Press. A Third Space also has plans to extend the anthology’s reach through readings and small-scale staged productions. The Long Story Project, the organization’s editorial and storytelling wing, has previously commissioned work spanning text, audio, oral tradition, microfilm, and visual art, and this anthology marks its most direct step yet into contemporary queer West African storytelling. Full guidelines for submission can be found here.