Jack Walker Press

books for verdant, thoughtful, and joyful living

Call for submissions: Seeking personal essays about friendship

Jack Walker Press seeks personal essays of up to 4000 words on the theme of friendship for a new anthology. Stories must be true. We seek dimensional characterizations of the people you write about. First-person essays preferred. Reprints considered if you own rights to the story. Essays should have a clear beginning, middle, and end with a story arc. Stories do not have to end with happily-ever-after. Literary and experimental essays welcome—coherence required. Make us laugh and cry. Make us cringe and applaud. Make us feel; make us think; don’t bore us. We reserve the right to edit/proofread. 
We enjoy authors who will cross-promote with us. 

We will pay $25 for essays of at least 1000 words and ask for one-time publishing rights. We know your work should garner more, and if our anthologies of personal essays sell well, we will pay more.  If you reprint this essay, acknowledge in writing that the work was previously published in this Jack Walker Press (include, title of book, publisher, and year) anthology. Payments made after publication.
See our previous anthology ‘Corners: Voices on Change.’ Topics on Friendship may include,

 

Friends who stood by you

Friendships across races and religions

Long – distance friendship

Acts of friendship by a stranger or near stranger

Difficult friends

I was wrong

Long-term friendship

Best friends

When my family wasn’t there

Guy’s trips

Girl’s trips

Spouse as friend

Ex-spouse as friend

Brother as friend

Sister as friend

Reclaiming friendship

We were in a band

Sports and friends

Letters and emails

When a friend tells you the hard thing you need to hear

Mentors as friends

Friends who took a risk or made a sacrifice

Friends who make me laugh/think/see the world differently

Lost friends

People change

Important friendships that didn’t last

Unlikely friendships

I thought you were my friend

I still remember you

Important lessons

The end of friendship/growing apart

Please like and visit Facebook JWP page and visit

JWP.com for updates. Those who submit will also be added to our newsletter list to keep you informed of publishing progress. Publication of this anthology will take many months after essays are accepted, edited, and complied to allow for proofreading, advance reviews, and marketing. Please include contact information on all submissions.  Submit at our Green Submissions page.  Submissions open now. If you are new to Green Submissions, you may wish to review their instructional video.

12 thoughts on “Call for submissions: Seeking personal essays about friendship”

    • Hi Marian, as of now the deadline is the end of Feb, 2019. We may have an extension. Can’t wait to read your submission. Best, AL

      Reply
      • I just tried to submit for the friendship theme, but no link was ever sent to my email or spam mail after I entered my name and password. I even tried to ask for a new password, but again, nothing sent. And yes, I checked for accuracy of email. It is correct. Please advise. Thank you!

        Reply
        • If you were unable to submit–you may send your submission with bio and contact information(including mailing address) to AL@JackWalkerPressDotCom. We write DOT instead of . to avoid being scanned by a bot.

          Reply
    • We are reading now, and will be making selections this summer. We’d like to be more precise, but it’s difficult. We may love an essay and then find we have too many many essays that are similar. Thanks so much for your interest. We will likely short-list essays in Late June and Early July, and make final selections in August. It may be that we find we need a few kinds of specific essays to round out the collection and that could delay things. I may be giving you more information than you asked, but I understand as a writer how long we wait for acceptance and how it can feel as if we are being ignored. I want you to know that we respect the work of writers and our lack of specific answers isn’t related to how happy we are that that writers submit to our series. Best, AL

      Reply
  1. Hello Al,
    I submitted my essay entitled “Besties” for your friendship anthology on 2/7/19. I was informed I was short listed on 8/16/19, but have not received a contract yet. Can you tell me if my essay is still being considered for publication?
    Thanks in advance for your reply.
    Best,
    Bari Benjamin

    Reply
    • Yes it is. Death in family at the same time a staff member left has slowed us down. But the anthology is still on. Thanks so much. AL

      Reply
  2. Aloha, I host writing workshops with authors and writers all over the world. Is there someone I can speak with about this anthology and putting something out to my students? The reason I ask this is that we write to themes and I can do a themed workshop with my 30 writers on friendship and have them forward you their work. Please let mw know if this appeals to you. I’m a developmental editor and most of my students are published and they push boundaries on creative content. Thank you. Laura

    Reply

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