Double Text produces media that uses the deeply personal as a lens for engaging the world. Our work is by and about queer people, and the way they move between text and subtext.
We are currently OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS for our apocalypse poetry anthology.
The Ways I Tried to Call You Home
by Christina Brown
This is a book about near misses; about codependency; about unfinished business. It is about trying to make a home of another person—what that effort gives and what it takes. “The Ways I Tried to Call You Home” is an exploration of what stays long after a relationship has ended.
Recurring Characters
by Evan Chelsee
This is a story about the scripts we have a hard time letting go of and the moments we focus on, to the exclusion of everything else.Through playlists, text messages, flowcharts, and other forms, recurring characters tells the story of one chaotic year and its reverberations.
Find signed copies at Page Against the Machine (2714 E Fourth Street, Long Beach, CA 90814) or order wherever books are sold.
Apocalypse Anthology
What does it mean to live through “the end of the world”? How do you find beauty in the wasteland? Where is the emotional nuance in a zombie contagion? What did the dystopian novels get wrong? What will poetry be like after the singularity? Can utopia exist in the midst of disaster?These are a few of the questions that interest us.Double Text Media is seeking to queer the apocalypse. We’re interested in all poetic forms and the gamut of styles. Apocalypse is big; there is room for the whole spectrum of experience. Bring us your climate angst, your meditations on robot overlords, your collapse surrender, your sawed-off shotguns, your visions of a new world.
Guidelines
Double Text is a queer press, and is accepting submissions from LGBTQ2S+ folks.
Submission deadline: May 5, 2025
Send up to 3 poems, totaling no more than 6 pages.
We are open to previously published work, but have a preference for unpublished material.
There is no submission fee.
We aren't able to offer monetary compensation at this time, but are offering a free contributor copy. There will also be an opportunity to buy additional copies at-cost after the launch of the book.
Considerations
We’re more interested in stubborn survival than in annihilation, though we’re not opposed to explorations of death and destruction (it’s the apocalypse, after all).
We welcome work that speaks to the current moment, but are generally not interested in direct commentary on specific political figures.
Thematic Elements
Environmental Justice
Climate catastrophe
Contagion, pandemic
Indomitable hope
Speculative futures
Solar punk
Utopian studies
Survival narratives
Futurism / anti-futurism
Inspiration
Prompts
Submissions don’t need to be written specifically for this collection, but here are a few prompts to consider if you’re writing something new:
Write a response to your favorite (or least favorite) piece of apocalyptic/dystopian media.
Describe something in the natural world after the ongoing impacts of climate change.
Make a list of things you would long for after an apocalyptic disruption of life.
Write a time capsule for a distant, alien, future about your daily life in the present.
What does apocalypse mean to you?
The Ways I Tried to Call You Home
By Christina Brown
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Upcoming Events
Reading: May 8, 6 PM
Timbre Books, 1910 E. Main St., Ventura, CA, 93001
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Praise
"Christina Brown’s 'The Ways I Tried to Call You Home' is a passionate, tender love story that pays bittersweet tribute to those magnetic yet tumultuous relationships that shake us, crack us open, and ultimately leave us forever changed. It’s easy to get lost in the delicious wistfulness of these pages, just as these young lovers are lost in each other like “two waves swallowing each other.” There is a hypnotic quality to these exquisite poems as they glide smoothly through the liminal, foggy dreamscape of memory, somersaulting in a play of language, cresting and breaking in a crescendo of nostalgia. This collection presents a savory taste of a dizzying intimacy wrapped in the push and pull of need. Though the relationship inevitably ends in heartbreak, it’s clear that some soul connections are deeply ingrained in our bones even long after the person we once loved is gone." - Nancy Lynée Woo, author of I’d Rather Be Lightning
"Christina goes beyond the breakup poem, exploring the universe of absence made around another person. This book is for anyone that has held onto someone who may not have been fully there to begin with." — Evan Chelsee, author of Recurring Characters
“To read this poetry collection is to witness the beauty, fallibility, and torment of love. Brown's verse is both soft and visceral, peeling back layers of the heart to expose its anatomical and sentimental truths.” — Tiffany Michelle Brown, author of How Lovely to Be a Woman: Stories and Poems