Submissions open for Warwickshire writers in time for the Coventry City of Culture launch

Silhouette Press, a Coventry-based not-for-profit publisher that aims to improve access in the publishing industry, is currently looking for passionate and engaging writing written by Warwickshire locals.

The voices of Coventry, Warwickshire, and surrounding areas will be amplified in an innovative anthology, just in time for the launch of the Coventry City of Culture.

If writers have any ideas, from storytelling to poetry, they welcome submissions from published or unpublished authors.

Work does not have to be centred around the local area; for example, a retelling of the legend of the Lady Godiva of Coventry is not something they will be interested in.

They are simply hoping to hear from local people whose voices are not usually heard in mainstream publishing. Although Silhouette Press is Coventry-based, they also have links to London.

The anthology will be released in 2022, around the same time as the Coventry City of Culture launch.

On their website, a representative from Silhouette Press said, "We are not interested in publishing works that are racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic or ableist and nor do we wish to engage with people who hold any such opinions.

"We're not really into any provocative 'edgelord' stuff either, it's just not our style and we'd reserve the right not to publish any of the above."

Regarding the editorial process, Adam Steiner of Silhouette Press will be managing submissions, and working alongside with Dostoyevsky Wannabe, regarding editorial decisions.

DW will handle all production and publication – at their own time and expense.

Adam will be editing the anthology in the spirit of the DW Cities project, curating work that holds well together as a collection, while offering a range of styles and voices representative of Coventry.

They can only select up to 12 individual pieces of prose and/or pages of poetry for the anthology – this will make the selection process very difficult and some writers will not be included.

A representative said, "We appreciate that this can be disappointing – but writers should bear in mind that rejection is a natural part of the process of submitting creative work – and is not necessarily a reflection of their work's quality, style, genre etc. but can occur for myriad reasons, such as limited space in the anthology."

They are open to short stories, creative non-fiction, and poetry, of under 2000 words for prose, and 1-3 poems, each of 40 lines.