Issue 5: To Be a Living Ancestor
Writing submissions
What do we do with our time on Earth?
What do we do with our human vitality, creativity, and intellectual power?
What does legacy mean as interdependent creatures, and how do we embody it?
In this issue of our Literary Anthology, we wish to explore our humanity through a sacred lens. As beings of the Earth, we begin a physical ancestral journey as soon as we’re born. There is wisdom that lives through and beyond each of us, and there is wisdom waiting to be created through our individual and collective life experiences.
Through the body, through what is woven, through our choices, through what is passed down, through forgetting, through remembering, through breaking apart, through union, through birth, through completion — what can it mean To Be A Living Ancestor? Not an individual only looking to those who came before for guidance, but an individual genuinely, messily, intentionally (or unconsciously), living their ancestral experience?
May the following themes spark meaningful movement in your reflection and creation:
Magic in the mundane
Joys of domesticity
Honoring the Earth
Time as a gift
The lifespan of grief in the body
Living acts of service
Developing one’s medicine
Evolution through presence
Weaving, craft, and storytelling
Food as medicine, cooking as craft
Memory, loss, rage
Messages from the trees
Ritual, altar-keeping, living as a sanctuary
Sacred motherhood, fatherhood, parenthood
For five years, we have published writing from only women of color on this platform. For this issue, we joyfully welcome poetry, personal narrative, fiction, and experimental writing from both women and men of color. Let’s see (& learn) how feminine and masculine voices harmonize in our unique exploration of soulful literature and art.
So, for Issue 5, let your writing be soulful; let it be deep. Write from a deeper place within your body, psyche, and heart, trusting your organic creative intelligence. As you prepare to share your written artwork with us, if you desire to fortify and nourish this soulful writing quality, please engage in any part of our Creative Enrichment Studio: 1-1 coaching, online immersions, and self-paced courses. We are here to support you beyond this publication.
In the end, we’ll choose a few pieces from each genre to publish in Issue 5, our Spring/Summer 2026 issue.
Details about Issue 5:
Submission window: January 19 - March 15, 2026 at 11:59 pm PST
Writers will be notified if their submission is selected by April 27, 2026.
Issue 5 will launch in May 2026.
There is a USD $5 fee for each submission, and USD $10 fee for each submission requesting editorial feedback. All submission fees support the costs and maintenance of this publication and platform.
General Guidelines
Maximum word count for prose: 3,000; you may submit 1 piece for consideration. Please ensure your piece has a title.
Maximum word count for poetry: 250; you may submit up to 2 poems for consideration. Each poem may be up to 250 words. Ensure all poems are in one document, each with its own title.
Themes to keep in mind + heart while considering your submission: Love, Body, Spirituality, Wellness, Identity
Translations from any language into English are welcome. Please note if your submission is a translation, what language it is translated from, and who it is translated by.
You are welcome to submit your writing if you identify as a woman or man of color. If you do not, but are passionate about this platform and opportunity, please extend your passion by sharing this opportunity with a special woman or man of color writer in your life.
All submissions must be original and unpublished; we do not accept previously published submissions, either in print or digitally. We ask for First Electronic and Archival Rights: your selected submission will first be shared through our digital Literary Anthology before it is published elsewhere. We will then archive your work to be accessed for future purposes/inspiration/teaching. You retain copyright of your original work. By submitting your work, you agree to this.
As the mission of this platform is to amplify the expressions of women of color, any references/external quotes you consider using should be representative of that.
The contents of your submission are original and your sole creation — no AI is involved at all. We embrace your authentic creative intelligence.
There is a USD $5 fee for each submission, and USD $10 fee for each submission requesting editorial feedback. All submission fees support the costs and maintenance of this publication and platform.
Submissions requesting editorial feedback will undergo an intimate and trauma-informed editorial process that includes developmental feedback, intending to support the writer in deepening and refining their authentic voice.
We hold your submissions in strict confidence and privacy, whether or not they are published. Your submission will only be seen by the Wellspringwords® editorial team.
We do not offer monetary compensation at this time. If you desire to support our initiative of empowering writers, you may contact us to discuss sponsorship opportunities.
As you prepare to join us, please take some time to read our About page and to enjoy the many published pieces by other talented women of color, found here.
More about contributing to the Wellspringwords® Literary Anthology:
Explore your authentic Self, your wisdom within, and your creative expression through writing.
Opt to receive editorial feedback from an experienced editorial team as you develop as a writer.
Add to your portfolio of published work.
Contributors are eligible to become a Guest Editor for future Issues of the publication.
Join the Wellspringwords® community of writers and artists from around the world.
For Issue 5, must identify as a woman or man of color/woman or man of the global majority.
Writing must align with the essence of Wellspringwords® — connecting to your deep, authentic Self, and expressing that creatively through words.