NOTE: SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 1 - and if you need a bit more time than that, let me know ...

You are invited to submit writing to a new anthology

We've all heard the scientific facts and predictions about global climate change. But when you hear the experts talking, how do you feel? Are you stunned, frightened, angry, concerned? Do you think about the places you love, and how they may be changed in the future? Have you already observed changes in the world around you? Has global warming affected your hopes and dreams for the future, your beliefs about humanity or the natural world, your faith in progress or in God? To what people, places, and symbols do you turn for strength, hope, and sustenance?

Facing the Change will be a different kind of book about global warming - filled not with bare facts and dire warnings but with human feelings, challenges, and hope, and written not by the experts but by everyday people from all backgrounds, ages, and walks of life - written by you. Anyone with the courage to face the emotional and spiritual dimensions of the climate change crisis is invited to submit a story, essay, or poem. Submissions should express your own personal experiences and reflections about the meanings of global warming, including (but not limited to) topics such as:

Perceiving the reality of climate change, through direct experience at home or while travelling, or through imagining what may happen in the future to places you love

Facing the feelings - fear, terror, grief, guilt, sadness, anger - all the emotional warning signs whose expression can be appropriate and healthy, but whose repression leads to disempowerment, despair, and paralysis

Dancing with your sources of life - connecting with those people, places, beings, and activities with whom you nurture love, joy, power, and hope in the face of crisis

Reflecting on your religious and philosophical foundations - reassessing your own fundamental beliefs, values, guiding symbols, and visions for the future

Choosing to change your life in any arena - work, family, lifestyle, community involvement, cultural activities, political choices - whether your goal is to try to prevent, to accept, or to adapt to climate change

Again, please ground your writing in personal experience, and in consideration of the emotional, spiritual, and philosophical meanings of climate change; no purely scientific expositions, political arguments, or moral polemics, please. Submissions must be typed and legible, with a brief author bio and complete contact information included in the document. (It would also be helpful to know how you learned of the project.) English only, please; speakers of other languages are encouraged to develop similar projects of your own. Sorry, no fees can be paid for use of any work. Submissions accepted through JUNE 1, 2008 (NOTE NEW DATE), soon after which I will prepare a proposal with which to approach potential publishers. Work may be submitted electronically (Word or plain-text documents only) to submissions(at)facingthechange.org, or in hard copy to the following address:

Facing the Change

c/o Steven Pavlos Holmes

21 Eldridge Rd.

Jamaica Plain, MA 02130

Questions or comments? Suggestions for helping publicize the project? Interested in distributing flyers at meetings, conferences, or events? Able to support the project financially? Contact me at steve(at)facingthechange.org. Thanks for your interest in Facing the Change!

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