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Creative call for submissions: the YES issue

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aAh! – your arts and culture magazine


Millennials, listen up again: our lovely, liberal generation is also unfocused and vague. We think we know everything – which we kind of do – but mostly we don’t. aAh! magazine hopes to present the opportunity for readers and writers to interrogate their own ideas about the world we’ve fallen into. Each issue will interrogate one important contemporary notion through our regular features, opinion pieces, spotlights, interviews, previews, art, poetry, flash fiction, photography and music.

This issue: YES

“I am not a ‘yes’ person. No matter who you are married to, you still need to lead your life.” – Melania Trump

How often do you say yes? …yeah, yah, yep, yup, mm-hmm, uh huh, that’s right, indeedy. Is there really such a need for so many? Yes is a big, exclamative word – or can be. Some yeses are small and insincere. Yes can be a no in disguise. Yes is a yellow word, a family of nods and winks. A yes can be the selling of a lie.

Yes is a word of consent, permission and agreement. Yes is political word, something chanted by an angry mob. Yes is the ultimate hippy word, maybe more so than LOVE, as in: open yourself up to all, man: say YES. Which is like the yes of YES, the British prog band, or Yoko Ono’s famous yes, a small word at the top of a ladder written on the ceiling. At this point, yes could sound like nonsense, just a meaningless sound – which it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah…

In Old – and Middle-English, yes was a stronger, more forceful alternative to the word yea. So what happened to yea? Imagine your teenage self answering parental questions: Did you do your homework? Yes. How many different yeses sleep in the one word? Do you love me? … Yes.

This issue is about optimism, hope, affirmation (and its lack). Yessir! About conformity, belief and rebellion. So tell us, why yes? If not, why no? What is there to say yes to, and how can we be sure?

We are taking submissions for:

  • Cover-Art Competition – submit high a resolution image of your work responding to the theme. Everything welcome – illustration, photography, graphic design, fine-art etc. The most YES will be featured!
  • Flash fiction/Poetry – responding to the theme YES. We encourage tenuous links! Surprise us. 350 words/40 lines.
  • Featured Artists – a spotlight on a visual artist – submit up to ten images and we will pick our favourites to be featured throughout the magazine. Fine artists of all practices welcome, illustrators, photographers and graphic designers. Send us a brief bio and explanation of how your work relates to the theme YES.
  • Self Portrait – take this however you like. It could be a literal portrait, a painting, a sculpture, a found object – anything that captures your inner YES.

Deadline: November, 2018.

Submissions for all categories should be sent to aah.editor@gmail.com. Please make sure to include your name and category of submission in the body of your email.

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aAh!

aAh! Magazine is Manchester Metropolitan University's arts and culture magazine.

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