Since September 2009, The New Quarterly: Canadian Writers & Writing and ARC Poetry Magazine have been whirling toward each other at a pace just shy of the speed of light. Expert analysis has confirmed that these high energy publications are on course to collide in Summer 2011: this widely anticipated event will be known forever after as The Quarc Issue.
The editors are soliciting two different kinds of work, under the headings Particle Fictions and Collisions & Collaborations:
"Quark, n2.... Particle physics. Each of a group of subatomic particles regarded ... as basic constituents of matter. ... Six quarks are known (designated up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top ... ), with a corresponding number of antiquarks" (OED). New Quarterly editor (and sometime physicist) Erin Noteboom adds: "The top and bottom quarks used to be called truth and beauty; unfortunately, no one could remember which was which."
Please send us new short work in any genre (poems, stories, essays, 1-3 pages in length), taking as your title one of those beguiling quark-names: up, down, charm, strange, top, bottom, beauty, truth. You need not take particle physics as your theme: the quark-name may be merely your jumping-off point.
In 2011, The New Quarterly and Arc Poetry Magazine will be joining forces to bring readers two special issues devoted to collections, collisions, and collaborations in science and the literary arts. We are currently accepting submissions of new work (or proposals for new work) from:
Submissions may be solo or joint: send us your poems, stories, essays; or propose an interview/conversation you'd like to undertake (writer with scientist, scientist with writer).
Remember that The New Quarterly and Arc are literary magazines, not academic journals:we are looking for work that speaks (wittily, articulately, provocatively) to the general reader.