While we wait for the “Cities” issue to return from the printers, writers can sharpen their pencils and flex their fingers in preparation for the summer issue’s theme: “Bad Girls”.

Illustration by Arthur M. Doweyko: http://www.ArthurMDoweyko.com

As the peerless Rebecca Solnit writes in the London Review of Books about the US election, “One got the impression that any power a woman had was too much, and that a lot of men found women very scary.” In line with the kind of women feared by patriarchy, Shooter seeks literary short fiction, non-fiction and poetry featuring not the Playboyesque, video-game, comic-book notions of Bad Girls, but defiant women who speak up and act out. We want to read about convention-defying antiheroines and unapologetic badasses who carve their own path. Give us the antics and mishaps of adventurers, intrepid souls and challenging contrarians, but make sure these characters are surprising and complex rather than reductive and cartoonish. Non-fiction that deals with topical feminist issues and women in male-dominated environments is particularly welcome. As usual, we prefer poetry that inclines to the observational rather than experimental end of the spectrum.

Please read the Submission Guidelines for information on how to submit. Writers may send one prose piece (between 2,000 and 7,500 words) and/or up to three poems to submissions.shooterlitmag@gmail.com by April 2nd, 2017, for inclusion in the summer issue.

Submissions are also open for Shooter’s 2017 Short Story Competition, which carries a slightly later deadline of April 16th, 2017, with no restrictions on theme. Please go here to read more on how to submit to the competition – we look forward to reading your work!