You’re invited! Our Elly Blue Publishing imprint has announced a call for submissions for its sixth anthology of feminist bicycle science fiction, with the theme of Dragons. The deadline is April 1st, 2018 (but it isn’t an April Fool’s joke, despite being a lot of good silly fun). Read the entire call for submissions and start dreaming up your story.
We’re not really big on “market research” here at Microcosm. In fact, as the “marketing director,” I can say with authority that most of our “marketing” work involves either submitting unspeakably mind-numbing spreadsheets to various distributor databases or giggling til our stomachs hurt over weird ideas and crass titles that tend to turn into stuff like our most popular books, our poster catalogs, and the most fun new events we get to attend.
But we’ve grown and changed a lot in the last few years (and definitely in the 12 years since our last reader survey in 2006), and we thought we’d check in with you all about what your needs are, how we’re doing, and if you have any wild ideas or pressing concerns that we can address.
So here it is. Please tell us whatever you like. If you decide to include your contact info we’ll add you to our monthly newsletter email list, but we won’t share it with anyone else. If you want to talk with us directly and get an answer to your specific question, feel free to email us.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Color happily and reflect back upon the bicycles of your life with Taliah Lempert’s newest coloring book! The pages are perforated and single-sided for easy sharing. Enjoy this beautiful book of bike art!
Recently we were approached about starting a new thing on a new platform that was all very top-secret, and we jumped at the chance (we like shiny things). That platform is Drip, Kickstarter’s new subscriptions program, and our project launched today in its inaugural class of creators.
We’ll still be using Kickstarter to fund the production of some of our individual books. Meanwhile, Drip is a little different: it’s about monthly support—it’s similar to Patreon, which we also use. It offers various levels of support; you can get ebooks or credit for our online store. By backing at our core level, you can have access to regular posts with advice about all aspects of our publishing work. You can ask us anything and we’ll do our best to talk you through it. And we’ll share regular windows into the life of our office.
Some posts we have planned for the near future include:
We’ve been doing this a long time, and we love sharing our books with you. Now, let us share our knowledge and lore, too.
Thank you for your support!
It’s been more than three years since Joe went on Reddit to do an “Ask Me Anything” Q&A session, aka an AMA. The results were surprising… to us, at least. The above image is pretty representative of the kind of “question” he got the first time around.
Never one to be deterred, he’s coming back for another #ActuallyAutistic AMA on Wednesday, November 22, 2017 at noon PST / 3pm EST. You’re invited to ask him anything you’d like about publishing, documentary filmmaking, living with autism, dealing with bullying, having a service dog, or how he gets his hair to do that.
Please join us!
Update: This AMA is live at this link!
A dozen people write about their experiences with bicycling and identity in the 21st century. This is the 14th issue of the Taking the Lane feminist bicycle zine.
The new (14th!) issue of Elly’s feminist bike zine, Taking the Lane, is called Bikequity and it’s live on Kickstarter right now.
Inside you’ll find a mix of new and familiar voices, from Bicycle / Race (forthcoming from Microcosm 2018) author Adonia Lugo’s motivational tale of cofounding an iconic cycling event to a stunning personal essay by many-times Bikes in Space contributor Gretchin Lair. Writers tackle issues of how bicycling interacts with their identity and socioeconomic status in diverse and compelling ways.
Oh, and the project was selected to participate in Kickstarter Gold, a month-long initiative to bring back the creators of iconic past projects. We’re honored to get to be part of it.
We think you’ll like this zine-book. Please consider backing it!
The cover of Bikequity
This is the first biography of Roger Rogerson, the original bassist and songwriter for the Circle Jerks. He disappeared under mysterious circumstances and then reappeared a decade later, instigating the band to get back together—and dropped dead two days later. J. Hunter Bennett’s oral history includes Rogerson’s bandmates and family and contains never-before-published history and photos.
Living in the margins of a culture she never felt comfortable in, Cindy Crabb touches on her experiences with feminism, girl-gangs, abuse, and gender identity. With stories, essays, interviews, and more, Cindy writes with fierce honesty and compassion, exploring subjects like consent, abortion, death, self-image, shyness, identity, and anarchism—embracing the complexities of each, finding her anger, her voice, and the things that help in her struggles with addiction, mental health, and intense loss. Along the way she travels the world, helps start a women and transgender health center, and fights against the social norms that made her feel so trapped.
Deadline extension: The deadline has been extended to June 15th, 2018 so that folks who find out about this call for submissions via our Kickstarter project will have time to write something.
Taking the Lane #15 is called True Trans Bike Rebel and guest edited by Lydia Rogue. They are looking for nonfiction writing about the experience of bicycling while being transgender or gender nonconforming. Submissions can be essays or reporting about bicycling, or other topics or stories in which bicycles play a part (or other human-powered transportation—skateboards, rollerskates, walking, you name it).
Submissions can be any length; word count between 500 and 2500 words is ideal for this format. Single-color illustrations and photos are also sought. Please submit your work as an attachment or link in an email to lydia at taking the lane dot com. Feel free to send any questions or ideas to them at that address as well. The deadline is June 15, 2018.
All contributors will be paid a share of the net profits from the Kickstarter project used to fund the zine.
Taking the Lane is a feminist bicycle zine published since 2010. Find other issues and read more about it here.