Wrinkles in the Brow of Youth:Creative Nonfiction on Aging and Dying Parents
Postmark deadline: January 15, 2010
Send submissions to:
Janet Wondra, Associate Professor
Department of Literature and Languages
Roosevelt University
430 S. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60605
Include an SASE for response. Submissions without an SASE will be discarded.
Response time: Three months
No email submissions, but feel free to send questions to janetwondra@gmail.com (use subject line “Aging Collection”)
If we are lucky, we outlive our parents, but do we feel lucky about it? The sorrow of seeing our parents decline and die and our regrets about the care we’ve given them over the years are tempered, we hope, by shared joys and the pride they take in our accomplishments.
Wrinkles in the Brow of Youth will be an anthology of creative nonfiction centered on the experience of adult children caring for aging and dying parents, exploring the pleasures and trials of tending to those who once tended us. Some of us are caring for parents directly, on a daily, hands-on basis. Some of us are caregivers from afar, in another state, across the country, even continents apart, but still crucial players in our aging parents’ well being. The essays will meditate on a variety of issues related to aging and dying: medical and financial challenges; the body with its mysteries and horrors; sibling alliances and rivalries; the challenges of the “sandwich generation” as well as those of the adult child who has no children; saying goodbye and experiencing the aftermath. The focus, though, is not on the clinical or sociological aspects of aging, but on the emotional experience of the adult child in responding to loss and facing the end of an era.
What I seek is literary nonfiction, not journalism or simple personal narrative. While the pieces in the collection will be personal—often highly so—what should distinguish them is elegant writing, attention to the possibilities of language and structure as well as to subject matter. The question is always: What makes creative nonfiction creative? The goal is to take personal experience and craft it into a work of art. Narrative, lyrical, meditative, and experimental essays are all welcome.
The tone need not always be sober nor the subject matter serious. The absurdities of the health care system alone invite a humorous essay. Often we navigate the most difficult times in life through laughter and treasured family jokes and stories. I invite a wide range of emotions, including anger, resentment, disappointment, ambivalence, relief, gratitude, delight, amusement, and appreciation. A possible list of topics is included below to pique the imagination and reassure writers that I am open to a variety of subjects however they may blend themselves within the individual essay.
The working title for the collection is drawn from King Lear’s rant against Cordelia, in which he first wishes her barren, then wishes her “a child of spleen”:
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt, that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!
Neither Cordelia nor we are thankless children, but like the Shakespearean character, we face challenging, sometimes treacherous decisions in midlife. While we may still seem like children to our parents, the remnants of our youth drop away as we usher our elders out of life. This collection gives writers an opportunity to reflect on this difficult period, to provide readers welcome insight, and through that greater understanding, to offer great pleasure.
Deadline: January 15, 2010 (postmark)
Length: I welcome essays of 8,000 words or shorter (about 20 pages). I will consider essays of 10,000 words or shorter (approx. 25 pages), but lengthy essays are less likely to be selected simply because of the need to create a well-balanced anthology.
Payment: Contributors will receive one copy of the collection as payment.
Previously published essays: I welcome both unpublished essays and pieces previously included in literary magazines, but the latter must include complete publication information, especially who owns the rights. Essays that have appeared in books will be considered but are less likely to be included.
Anticipated publication date: Summer 2011. Two university presses have already expressed interest in the collection, but I plan to approach New York publishers first and anticipate significant enthusiasm for the collection.
N.B. This is a collection of creative nonfiction. While I will look at poetry and fiction submissions, the chance of including them is remote at best.
I look forward to reading your contribution.
Possible topics
- The cusp: role reversal with aging parents
- The move from independence to a caregiving facility
- Care in the home versus institutional care
- Longing: caring for parents from a distance
- Cultural expectations in elder care
- Absence: caring for the parent who wasn’t there (or deciding not to)
- Parents in pairs versus single parents
- The second time around: when an elderly parent falls in love
- Humor and aging
- Pleasures: elder care at its best
- Demands placed on the “sandwich generation”
- Profit and loss: taking over a parent’s finances
- Inheritance: financial and emotional
- Mirroring: foreseeing your future in your parents’ present
- Advocating for good health care
- Memory loss, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease
- The role of memories in relating to aging parents
- Secrets at last revealed
- Siblings and their discontents
- Allies of the adult child
- Dread, relief, guilt, ambivalence, denial, and the unspeakable
- Death of parents: the event and the emotional and practical aftermath
- When a parent dies suddenly
- Orphans: being left behind
About the editor
Janet Wondra’s creative nonfiction has appeared in such journals as The Southern Review, Bellingham Review, Denver Quarterly, and The Christian Science Monitor and in the anthologies Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction (Norton) and In the Middle of the Middle West: Literary Nonfiction from the Heartland (Indiana University Press). Her poetry is collected in three volumes, Emerging Island Cultures, The Wandering Mother, and Long Division, and has been published in journals including Witness, Michigan Quarterly Review, Connecticut Review, The Southern Review, and Exquisite Corpse. On three occasions, she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Also an award-winning filmmaker, she has screened her short experimental films at venues including the Darklight Film Festival (Ireland), European Media Art Festival (Germany), International Women’s Film and Video Festival (Austin, TX), Guild Complex Poetry Video Festival (Chicago), and Mill Valley Film Festival (CA) as well as at art museums across the nation. She directs the Film Studies program at Roosevelt University in Chicago, where for six years she was director of the Creative Writing Program. A former editor of New Delta Review and assistant editor of The Georgia Review, she is the publisher of Oyez Review and continues to serve as an advising and contributing editor for The Georgia Review.
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