Poet | Writer | Author
Call for Submissions
Anthologies and Memoir
Imperfect Parenting
Call for Submissions
If you’ve ever been a parent, you’ve had self-doubt. For example, when did you discover your infant could turn over? For many, it was when you heard a thump five seconds after looking away from your infant dozing on your bed to answer the phone. Luckily, infants’ bones have the consistency of pool noodles. When did your moment of helicopter parenting run out of gas? Ever think your kid was lying when they were truthful? What did your child do or say that taught you how to be a better parent?
Share your thoughts of self-doubt, regret, misjudgments and what those moments taught you. How did they shape your understanding of being your child’s parent; your effort to be the parent you envisioned. What made you doubt whether you were cut out for it? What did imperfect parenting teach you?
Our goal is to publish an anthology, both online and in print, that shows how even the best parents struggle.
Guidelines
This call is open to any English-speaking mom, dad, gay parent, foster parent, grandparent, etc. who had a significant role in raising a child. Humor is a plus.
Submit your:
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Poems, up to 75 lines
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Flash fiction, up to 1000 words)
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Essays (up to 2500 words)
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Short stories (up to 4000 words).
Please put your work in the body of an email with a 75-word bio, your address, phone, and email. Optional: Include a brief paragraph (up to 50 words) about how well your child/children are doing today.
Email to emily@emilycalvo.com with “Parenting” in the subject.
Deadline: November 1, 2026
Editors
Susan Fuchtman is a poet, flash-fiction writer, and short-story writer
living in Iowa City, Iowa. Her recent and forthcoming work can be
found in Moon City Review, Thin Skin, South Florida Poetry Review,
Short Circuit, and elsewhere. At PorchLight, an Iowa City-based
non-profit that helps writers of all income and experience levels to
grow their writing practices and find creative community. Susan is a
volunteer and board member. She leads two workshops: Flash Forward, a flash-fiction workshop, and Write Now! writers’ group. She has a BA in Liberal Arts from Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, and an MBA from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
Current Project!
Mixes Tapes
—My Gay Dad and the Rocky Ride to Our True selves
Not Yet Published
Dad was an eccentric, closeted gay, Chicago artist who hobnobbed with celebrities and criminals. In 1977, while leading a double life, he began to record almost everything. By 2000, he’d recorded 6000 audio cassette tapes, which are archived at the Kinsey Institute.
During those years, Dad faced financial hardships, divorce, alcoholism, an arrest and beating by the police, dysfunctional family dynamics, my brother’s schizophrenic diagnosis, and physical decline. Meanwhile, I married young and had two daughters, earned a college degree, escaped an abusive marriage, launched a writing career, raised my daughters, published two books, tried to recapture my youth, performed at poetry slams, cared for my aging dad, and learned to embrace my own creativity.
The book is the story of my father and I both learning to accept ourselves and lead an authentic, creative life without losing our compassion or sense of humor.
Current Project!
SUBMIT!!!
Emily Thornton Calvo is a Chicago poet, writer, and artist. In 2019,
the Guild Literary Complex recognized her as one of “30 Writers to Watch.” Calvo’s poems have appeared in Wherever I’m At, East on
Central, After Hours, and many others. In 2012, the Chicago Department of Culture and Special Events awarded her a grant to self-publish her collection of poems, Lending Color to the Otherwise Absurd. She has performed her work in numerous schools and festivals, including the Art Institute of Chicago through the Poetry Foundation. She is also the co-author of How to Succeed in Advertising When All You Have is Talent and 25 Words or Less...How to Write Like a Pro to Find That Special Someone Through Personal Ads). Other titles include First Comes Love, Sisters, and other humor books. As a visual artist, she was honored to collaborate with Nikki Giovanni to illustrate Standing in the Need of Prayer, Giovanni’s gift to mothers who lost sons to police violence. Calvo also has two grown daughters who don’t hate her.
FREE
Wherever I'm At
The Midwest Modern Language Association has selected Wherever I’m at: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry for its prestigious 2022
Book of the Year prize.
These pages feature outstanding work produced by more than 150 poets and artists, with a range of style and complexity that mirrors Chicago’s varied and nuanced character. Every poet and artist boasts strong Chicago ties.
A dazzling array of voices representing many generations of Chicagoans grace these pages, including essential poets such as Li-Young Lee, Tyehimba Jess, Sandra Cisneros, Campbell McGrath, Patricia Smith, Edward Hirsch, Kathleen Rooney, Elise Paschen, Sterling Plumpp, Marianne Boruch, Tara Betts, Reginald Gibbons….the list is exhaustive, deliberately so. Reading this anthology will erase any doubt that Chicago belongs in the top tier of literary cities, and in the top tier of cities, period.
Reviews
Newcity Lit: My Kind of Town: A Review of “Wherever I’m At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry” by Mary Wisniewski. The anthology is, in short, full of startling and various riches.. Read More
WBEZ Chicago (NPR): In the hands of these poets, Chicago is a collection of scintillating everyday moments by Elly Fishman. A blockbuster anthology, just out, gives a star turn to 134 living poets with deep ties to the city. Meet three standouts. Read More.
Third Coast Review: Myriad Chicagos, Wherever I’m At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry, reviewed by Patrick T. Reardon. Read More
Chicago Tribune: Chicago as a poem: The birthplace of slam poetry finally gets a contemporary anthology of poetry by Christopher Borrelli. Some days the hardest thing in the world is explaining Chicago to someone not from Chicago...Read More
Wednesday Journal (Oak Park, IL): Poems where you can find yourself by Michelle Dybal. Being whisked away on a journey through Chicago — its neighborhoods, its establishments, its parks and natural habitats, across time...Read More
AMERICAN gUN
FREE Soft Cover or Request a Digital Copy
American Gun: A Poem by 100 Chicagoans is a collective response to the individual suffering behind the statistics. Chris Green asked one-hundred poets from across the city to take turns writing a communal poem about Chicago’s gun violence. The poets range in age, gender, race, ethnicity, and poetic experience. Well-known poets write with teen poets from the South and West Sides… many from the group Young Chicago Authors, but also young poets from Chicago’s alternative high schools, where statistically, students experience the most gun violence in the city.
The poem is a pantoum, a poetic form where every line is repeated twice. This form mirrors the semi-automatic firing of a weapon and also the seemingly endless cycle of shootings in Chicago.
Our country needs more truth, more collaboration – something like this poem where diverse people sing together in sanity and beauty. When politics fails us, poetry tells us we are not alone in our outrage and hope.
Dad was never a planner. In 1977, Dad and George(?) went off to the grocery store around noon to pick up some food for a Thanksgiving dinner ON Thanksgiving.
My brother Dave loved roast beef, so Dad veered from tradition and gave George money and a list to pick up the goods while he went to Walgreens for more audio cassettes. After he picked up George and the food, the car slowed to a halt. Dad was out of gas. Everything is closing, and Dad's gas can was left on the back porch or "borrowed" by one of Dad's crowd. He called Dave from a pay phone, but he's still sleeping. No answer.
Listen, to how Dad got to a gas station.