12.04.06

Call for Submissions — Essays on Menstruation

Posted in administrative, calls for submissions, making book, publishing, women at 3:10 pm by Hanne Blank

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Breakthrough Bleeding:
Essays on The Thing Women Spend A Quarter Of Their Time Doing, But No One’s Supposed To Talk About
Edited by Hanne Blank and Moira Russell
Forthcoming from She Devil Press, an imprint of Suspect Thoughts Press (www.suspectthoughts.com); scheduled publication date Fall 2008.

FINALLY, a book that isn’t afraid of a little blood!

Between puberty and menopause, most women spend close to a quarter of their lives dealing with menstruation. But except for coming-of-age stories and the occasional Stephen King novel, all this spilled blood hardly creates a blip on the cultural radar. It’s as if someone has removed it all with a super-duper magic cleanser… ironic, considering what the rest of us go through to get the stains out.

Breakthrough Bleeding is here to change all that. Thoughtful, challenging, political, and maybe even sexy, this collection of essays looks at menstruation from the inside and the outside, a super-maxi size dose of heavy-thinkin’ menstrual mojo.

We are looking for essays and creative nonfiction that analyze, question, and explore all aspects of menstruation and menstruation culture. Potential topics include:

  • menstruation and gender – how does menstruation fit into (or conflict with) experiences of gender?
  • menstrual products advertising & the “sanitary products” industry
  • menstruation, personal relationships, and sex – from phobias to fetishes
  • menstrual education – what do we learn and how do we learn it, what do we teach and how to we teach it?
  • menstruation as a human rights issue – how are women’s periods dealt with in prisons, shelters, mental institutions, long-term care facilities, and other institutions?
  • women who voluntarily/intentionally stop menstruating
  • men’s experiences with / attitudes regarding menstruation
  • menstruation humor
  • menstruation and ridicule/shame
  • transmenstruation – what kinds of issues come up around menstruation for intersex, transsexual and transgendered people?
  • premature menopause (organic or induced)
  • enjoying/appreciating menstruation
  • menstruation and/in the workplace
  • menstruation through the eyes of Western medicine
  • the “menstrual alternatives” movement (e.g. reusable pads/cups/sponges) and its culture
  • menstruation in straight vs. queer spheres
  • feminist culture and menstruation

GENERAL GUIDELINES:

  • NONFICTION only.
  • NO fiction, poetry, or memoir. (This means that unless there is a specific reason for it to be in your piece, we do not want to hear about when you got your first period or how bad your PMS is. This is not a collection of first-person narratives.)
  • Submissions should be between 1500 and 5000 words in length.
  • TWO (2) copies of your submission will be required.
  • Hard copy (paper copy) submissions ONLY. No electronic or emailed submissions will be considered.
  • Typed or computer printed ONLY.
  • Formatting: 12-point type in some generic traditional font (Times, Georgia, Geneva, Courier, etc.), one-inch margins, double spaced. Please include all italics, boldface, blockquotes, section breaks, etc.
  • References, if any, may be either footnote or endnote according to author preference and should use Chicago Manual of Style format. No inline references please.
  • Please number your pages
  • Each submission should be accompanied by a cover sheet that contains ONLY the following data: Author Name, Pseudonym (if used), Title of Submission, Author mailing address, Author e-mail address, and Author telephone number.
  • The author’s name or pseudonym should NOT appear anywhere on the submission itself.
  • Each submission should be accompanied by a single business-sized self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE, with first class letter postage already affixed). Submissions from outside the USA do not require the SASE.
  • Please DO NOT send additional cover letters with your submission,, only the cover sheet as indicated above.
  • Please DO NOT send your only copy/copies of your work.
  • NOTE: Manuscripts will not be returned. Manuscripts not chosen for the book will simply be recycled.

SUBMISSIONS ADDRESS:
Send all submissions to the following address

Breakthrough Bleeding – SUBMISSIONS
C/o Hanne Blank, Editor
44 E. 26th Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218 USA

COMPENSATION:
Writers whose work is included in the book will receive a cash honorarium (amount TBD) and two copies of the book.

DEADLINE:
Deadline for all submissions is March 20, 2007.

Writers will be informed of editorial decisions no later than June 1, 2007.

11.27.06

Looking for a Few Good… Interns

Posted in administrative, advertisement, making book, sexuality at 3:33 pm by Hanne Blank

I’m in the teeny baby-steps early stages of work on the next nonfiction book, whose working title is Straight: A History of Men, Women, and ‘Sex’.  Having been through this before with Virgin, I have a bit better idea of what this first stage should look like now than I did a few years ago, and am attempting, therefore, to correct for the errors of the past by not making the same mistakes twice.

Hence I am looking for a couple of good research interns, one for spring and one for summer 2007.  If this interests you, let me know!  If you know someone who might be interested, please feel free to pass this along.

Independent Scholar/Writer Seeking Research Interns

Writer and historian Hanne Blank, author of several books including the unprecedented new history Virgin: The Untouched History (Bloomsbury, March 2007), is looking for two research interns, one for Spring 2007 and one for Summer 2007.  Interns will be working with Blank on research for her next nonfiction book, a history of heterosexuality and heteronormativity in the West.  Past research interns have worked an average of 5-10 hours per week.  Hours are generally flexible.

Applicants should have: excellent research skills (library and Internet), understanding of bibliographic form, regular (at least daily) computer/Internet access, available access to at least one research library, and excellent written and verbal skills.  Candidates also should be good at working unsupervised, making judgment calls about information quality,  comfortable working on issues of human sexuality, and reliable communicators.  Foreign language skills are a big plus, particularly German, French, and Latin.

These internships are unpaid, but I happily extend ongoing support (including letters of recommendation) to my interns and former interns.  Some former research interns who have worked for me are now employed by Elsevier, NYU Press, National Public Radio, and other prestigious businesses in the information and publishing sector; others are excelling in graduate school.

Applicants may be either local (Baltimore, MD) or long-distance, with a slight preference for local applicants.

To apply, please send a letter indicating your interest to hanne at-sign hanneblank dot com.  Please describe your skills and background, the reasons you are interested in this internship, and be sure to indicate whether you are applying for the Spring or Summer internships.

I promise there’ll be substantive and entertaining content in this blog again someday soon.  Between trying to recover from the health stuff I’ve been dealing with, and trying to get going with this new project, I fear I haven’t had a whole lot of entertaining stuff to relate, nor have I been feeling terribly chatty.

A handful of recommendations, though: Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory read by Eric Idle, available unabridged on CD from Harper Children’s Audio; Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts;  the album Guest Host by Stew; and the ultra-sexxay new open-source research tool Zotero (Firefox 2.0 and up only, sorry, IE-heads…).

09.22.06

Back in the saddle again…

Posted in administrative at 5:47 am by Hanne Blank

You know what? I’ve tried LiveJournal. I’ve tried Vox. I’ve tried Blogspot and Blogger.

I’ve come back to hosting my own damn blog, and have decided on WordPress as my software because it’s the most congenial one I’ve found. Plus it’s open-source, so what’s not to like?

It may take me a little while to get the hang of everything, so bear with me if there are periodic bumps and glitches. Golly, it’s nice to have some control over my blogily functions again.