As children we crossed the Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers in search of Patalkanya Manimala and fell asleep at the touch of the Golden Stick while listening to Scheherazade’s never-ending stories. We danced with Cinderella at the Ball and held Frodo’s hand on Mount Doom, all the while learning how to swish and flick at Hogwarts. Maybe we took an extra jump and time-travelled across wells into medieval Japan with Inuyasha’s gang, or searched for lost cards with Sakura or hatched dragon eggs with Eragon. Maybe we read them. Maybe we heard them. Maybe we saw them on screens. Howsoever we encountered them, fantasy, fairy stories, folktales built our childhood imaginations. And we in turn, at ACLiSA, ask you to share them with us in our latest Feature Series.
We are looking for three kinds of contributions:
- Articles: Semi-academic pieces that ruminate on the fantasy genre in children’s and young adult literature in South Asia.
- Memoirs: Nostalgia driven writing recording childhood memories of reading fantasy fiction or listening to fantasy stories such as fairytales from grandparents.
- Stories: Original fantasy writing in prose or verse, preferably by those below the age of 18 for the Children’s Corner of our blog.
With each, or all of these categories, we would encourage and welcome audio recordings to accompany the written contributions – perhaps the author of the original story reading their story out, or the writer of the memoir piece writing about how they recall their grandparent telling them the particular story but the fantastical elements they remember turned out to be different in the canonical story, while they tell us their grandparent’s story in the audio.
The deadline to send us your contributions to aclisa.contact@gmail.com for the Feature Series is 31st October 2024 so make sure they reach us before the Halloween Spirits Possess You!