Get ready for Common House's very first summer contest! Submit poetry, short fiction, or creative nonfiction that relates to the theme "cut." The top three finalists will be published on the website!

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Exploration of Theme

Cuts can be endings: events that are meant to last longer but don't – sometimes with notice, sometimes without – or moments coming to an inevitable or predestined end. The power in cutting something short (a relationship, an experience, an opportunity, a sentence) or the vulnerability of someone else doing so. Like rope, a cut can be freeing or a final destination. "Cut" calls to mind the director's line: you could experiment with techniques that call to mind filmmaking – hundreds of shots spliced together to make a comprehensive whole, an illusion of continuity.

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Or let your screws show with juxtaposed scenes or vignettes spliced together. What does it mean for a good drug to be cut with something else? Or, take us through thrilling moments that confront the violence of what it means to cut or be cut. When cuts are lifesaving on an operating table or perceived as such when letting the bad blood. The meaning of visible wounds, clean or otherwise. Explore the many sharp things that are without agency.

Content Warnings

We would like to remind contributors to name any potentially triggering subjects at the beginning of the piece out of respect and consideration for our editors. "Trauma porn" or using triggering subjects simply for a shock factor will not be tolerated and pieces exhibiting such scenes will not be considered for the contest.

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Submissions close Sunday, August 24th @ 11:59 PM.