Call Out for Submissions
Submissions open: prose, poetry, reviews
Submissions window: 7th - 31st July 2025
Publication: Edition Two, launching on 29th October 2025 (Sustainability Day)
Bending The Arc publishes stories, poems and features that bend the arc of the possible towards a thriving future on Earth.
What we’re looking for:
Poems, short-stories, novel extracts and hybrid pieces that write the future into being from writers across all genres.
Thrutopian writing imagines ways through to a world we would be glad to leave to future generations. It tells stories about tangible change and walks us along the challenging path from now to a hopeful, liveable tomorrow. It accepts unpredictability and upheaval as foundational to the times that we’re living into, but doesn't dwell in that fear.
The interpretation of thrutopian ideals in poetry and prose is wide. It could include practical elements of imagining a path from where we are now to where we want to be, or pieces that build collective action, or that express belief or yearning for a future that is achievable and liveable. For poetry, thrutopoetry takes us beyond the nature poem, the praise poem and the ecopoem to create longing for a liveable future on Earth.
Thrutopias are works of intention and longing, which aim to change our belief in ourselves as people who can and will make a future for our species on Earth, in ways that respect and integrate with nonhuman life on this planet allowing us all to thrive and flourish.
In summary thrutopian writing
Writes the future into being.
Has a tone of urgency or purpose
Foregrounds adaptation and innovation
Is not dystopian, utopian or in fantasies of other worlds.
Focuses on our personal and collective agency to choose a flourishing future
Shows ways humans create resilient communities
Mends separation from the animate earth
Comes into a new sense of what it is to be human
Writes directly into the trouble, through the turbulence and takes us beyond
Sparks joy. While thrutopias can yearn for or mourn old certainties they focus on the path forward which is alive, and full of potential and there is no choice but to walk it, so we may as well enjoy every waking and sleeping moment!
Stories:
Write the future into being. Thrutopian writing imagines ways through to a world we would be glad to leave to future generations. It tells stories about tangible change and walks us along the challenging path from here and now to a hopeful, liveable future.
We welcome thrutopian submissions of fiction in all genres of up to 2030 words. We will accept extracts and previously published works with clear thrutopian themes.
Please read the current edition for inspiration and follow the submission guidelines.
Poetry:
Write the future into being. Thrutopoetry imagines ways through to a future we would be glad to leave to our children. Thrutopoetry goes beyond the nature poem, the praise poem and the ecopoem to create longing for a liveable future on Earth.
We welcome unpublished thrutopoetry in all genres. We also accept previously published poems with clear thrutopian themes.
Please read the current edition for inspiration and follow the submission guidelines.
Reviews:
We welcome review submissions, it’s part of our mission to give as much attention to thrutopian works as possible, so please tell us about what’s out there already and/or review it yourself. We welcome deep dives on a book or theme, smorgasbord reviews that offer smaller reviews of several publications, as well as snappy, personal recommendations.
How to Submit
Full submission guidelines can be found on our submissions page
We hope that Bending The Arc will inspire writers to create their own work in the genre, so we follow yesterday’s ‘How to’ guide with today’s Call Out. Tomorrow, we’ll feature farming at RSPB Haweswater by Lee Schofield.
