It’s been a while since we last clamoured for your attention, gentle readers, but we have been engaged by the devastating spectacle that greets us each morning. Each new day has been fit to burst with fresh horrors. Fire, plague, poverty, strife—even now, our eyes remain fixed on the heavens, waiting for the locusts to descend.

Or the intercontinental ballistic missiles.

But, lo! What shining light now pierces the darkening sky? Is it an ending?

The third volume of Sūdō Journal wants to know what fresh hell we have awoken to today. Another natural disaster or a global pandemic? Perhaps a race riot, cyber-attack, or just another extra-judicial killing? The struggle to make sense of a world gripped by conflict seems ever more futile. Perhaps it is time to light the match and walk away from the entire debacle. What is your axe to grind? What is your blazing bridge? We are dying to know.

Sūdō Journal calls for submissions of art, photography, poetry and prose. We call for essays, fiction, creative nonfiction and poems that could address but are not limited to,

• the defunding of the Humanities in Australia.
• the experience self-isolation.
• families at the point of collapse.
• the future of research in the twenty-first century.
• glorious middle-fingers to power.
• the erasure of uncomfortable histories.
• the role of iconoclasm in the arts.
• bridge trolls and flame wars.
• the disconnect between regional and metropolitan arts communities.
• the intractability of colonial violence in Australia.
• the future of Australia’s place in the Asia-Pacific region.
• the parochialism of the contemporary Australian city.
• stories from the geographical, cultural, social or political fringes.

Email all contributions to submissions@sudojournal.com. Submissions should be no longer than 6000 words. Include the type of submission (essay, fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry or images), author’s name and title of the work in the subject line of the submission email. Include a brief abstract for academic essays (no more than 75 words). Book reviews of no longer than 1000 words are also welcome. Follow MLA citation style and format. All written contributions should be submitted as a Microsoft Word file, in double-spaced 12pt font. All images used must be with permission only. Hard-copy submissions will not be accepted and will not be returned.

Submissions close August 31, 2020 for our January 2021 issue.

Image: “The House of Leaves – Burning 4” (CC BY 2.0) by LearningLark