Listen, we all have monsters. What we want though are real monsters. We know them all: Vampires, Werewolves, Dragons, Kaijus, disgusting creatures from depths unknown with scaled yet slimy bodies, encapsulating pure fear and disgust, lurking in shadows and moving in the corner of our eyes.

Guillermo Del Toro once said: “[...] that [he] loves monsters, [he] identif[ies] with monsters” and we do too! Not for nothing does China Miéville state in his Theses on Monsters that: “[t]he history of all hitherto-existing societies is the history of monsters.” – Monsters are allegorical, they are depictions of humanities, not oppositions but rather manifested appositions – we are monsters thus monsters are us. Monsters are part of every and any culture, transmitted through legends and oral traditions and fairy tales (becoming cautionary tales); part of (proto-)science-fiction since its creation through the human amalgamation of a monster that is the monster of Frankenstein (or is Frankenstein the monster?) in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).

We ask you now: How do you define a monster? What does it look like? Surprise us with new monsters or old monsters with new twists. And when we say monster, we mean monsters and not the metaphorical meaning that something is monstrous – no, we want to feel and see and smell the monster.

Make it weird and progressive and yours!

If you need inspiration, we suggest you have a look at China Miéville’s Theses on Monsters (although we don’t agree with tenet number 4 – we don’t mind Ghost Stories, they can be monsters!). Or looking at weird fiction in general would be a great beginning – Jeff VanderMeer together with his partner Ann VanderMeer created genre-defining anthologies.

We are looking for 8 stories. They should be short stories with a maximum of 3000 words, and should be written in English, German, French, or Luxembourgish. The submission is open for people either from Luxembourg or living in Luxembourg, and should be at least the age of 18.

We also accept Poems (up to two poems per person).

The accepted stories will receive a payment of 70 euros (budget is tight, sorry! But we want to be as transparent as possible), as well as two copies of the anthology. The stories will be printed and published online on the website. Additionally, the story will be edited in correspondence with the author, of course.

The submission deadline is the 15th of May 2024. The zine will be published at the end of the year. The jury are the Aner Welten Team: Sandy Heep and Cosimo Suglia.

Please follow the formatting rules on our website. You can find them here.

Ready to submit? Send an e-mail with your submission following the formatting rules on our website at: monster@anerwelten.lu