Acclaimed poet and critic Peter Campion to edit
The whole of American literature might be seen as one extended experiment in finding a form for voices trying both to capture and pierce the nation’s cacophonous history and democracy.
From Whitman’s constant revisions of Leaves of Grass to Stein’s authorial meditations in The Making of Americans, from Toni Morrisson’s interlaced points of view in The Bluest Eye to William Gass’s metafictional deep dig into the disappointed heart of America in The Tunnel, the great American experiment often has found its best reflection in the efforts of our most daring writers. New forms for our collective howl are yet to unfold. The infinite gesture toward accurately representing ourselves continues.
Unbound Edition Press is now open for submissions to our anthology of new American writing, to be edited by acclaimed poet and critic Peter Campion, with publication in early 2022. This collection will not be simply an anthology of experimental writing; it will be also an experimental anthology.
With the very idea of America changing – personally, culturally, generationally, globally – experimental American writing seems especially relevant. How do we see ourselves now? What new or revised forms can contain our emerging or fading notions of self, identity, community and country? We feel sure bold writers must be asking questions like these.
In bringing this project to life, we have our own set of questions to grapple with: What does the form of the anthology itself mean now? What qualifies as genuinely new, experimental and worthy of anthologizing, and by what standards? Does editorial ordering and reading arc matter when all information is digitally disaggregated? Might there be countless combinations of works changing across time? This experimental anthology poses these and other questions, including how the reader becomes an active participant in the evolving experiment.
Our vision and plan is to publish this anthology in hardcopy, digital and social formats – all pieces kept together yet playfully unbound, with the individual works intentionally randomized. After publication, the pieces in the anthology can be constantly reordered by authors, readers, communities and technologies.
The publisher and editor are especially interested in literary experiments from members of BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and other underrepresented communities.
Submissions are free and open to all genres, cross-genres and forms.
Authors selected for the anthology will be paid for their work, receive a free copy of the anthology and be included in various community readings. The publisher acquires First North American Serial Rights.
Please follow guidelines on our Submittable portal.
