Winter Solstice: Points of Light

When the winter solstice approaches and days contract, I often return to seasonal rereads — Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Nina MacLaughlin's Winter Solstice, essays by Kathleen Jamie, or the fiction and poetry of George Mackay Brown, among others — with a soundtrack of music that warms the darkness without pretending it isn't there, like the compositions of Laura Cannell or the guitar of John Fahey. Art that is earthy and crisp, that isn't distracted from the cold moment at hand by looking too far forward, because the turn of the year is so much more than the return of the light and the nearing of spring and summer, as welcome as those seasons will be when they come. The turn of the year is its own time to savor and that's what I'm hoping you'll help me do though a special call for submissions.

I'm looking for very short pieces of fiction or "fiction?" or prose poetry or something between, like the solstice itself. A single paragraph or something like it — go on too long and you'll lose the light. Not plots or punchlines, not grand stakes or too much action compressed into a small space, instead observations and moments and the hinges on which the year turns. The almost unnoticed flashes of life in the deep part of winter that thrill and sustain us. Nature and folklore and wildlife and quiet, or encounters in the streets and subways and kitchens of the city, or something else I won't even think of until you show it to me. This is all going to be an experiment because winter is a season with time on its hands to see ideas through and find out what happens.

Rather than publish these selections one at a time, my plan is to publish a couple of batches by multiple authors on days around the solstice and the new year. The actual number will be determined by what I receive. And it's going to be a quick submission window, because light is fleeting. I look forward to seeing what glints come my way.