Submissions
Get Rid of Meaning: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Writing #5
Open for submissions 27th Oct – 16th Nov 2026
Get Rid of Meaning: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Writing is a biannual periodical by Sticky Fingers Publishing, exploring how and where meaning is produced, maintained and distributed. Across our previous issues, Get Rid of Meaning has become a site for interrogating the material conditions and affective systems of meaning-making, and for opening up possibilities of fugitive study through experimental non-fiction.
For Issue 5, we are looking for works that seek to create ruptures in the intentionally nonsensical political landscapes we live within, and uncover the forms of solidarity that emerge from those ruptures. While previous issues have asked how we might survive systems of violence, here we are asking what happens when we reject the frameworks of survival that uphold those very systems, and instead seek to break them apart.
Along these lines, recently we have been interested in:
- Uncovering forms of study which, to paraphrase kimi malka hanauer’s toward an ungovernable study, resist the extractive demands of ‘order’;
- How bearing witness to abject violences are also calls to keep renewing our frame of reference for what is acceptable, and in turn, how such renewals provide moments for attention and disorder;
- Such acts of disorder that might undermine the individual as political subject, and how this disorder transforms acts of gathering into conditions that make insurgency possible;
- Returning to Karen Barad’s work around ‘intra-action,’ which describes agency not as an individual property but as a dynamism of forces, and reciprocity between things;
- How property, and property-like relations, deform subjectivity and construct ‘freedom’ as contingent on the abuse of others and things; as articulated in Daniel Loick’s The Abuse of Property;
- What complicity and accountability mean in the context of understanding agency as a mutual dynamic instead of individual property; how do we take responsibility for our actions without ‘owning’ them; how do we give things away with love and not abandonment; how do we honor our experiences without transforming them into our property?
Submissions do not need to be limited to these prompts. We want to support work that challenges our thinking, presumptions and complicity. To get a sense of the work in this series so far, take a look at our previous issues which you can purchase through our Big Cartel, or listen back to previous publication launches on our MixCloud.
Submissions
We are looking for experimental essays and non-fiction between 1-3,000 words from 5-7 contributors total, who will receive a £150 fee each. We will not be accepting poetry or short stories, but hybrid forms are welcome. Full or partial draft submissions are preferred, but pitches will also be considered.
If you are sending in a pitch, please include:
- A draft title
- 250 words which clearly outline the topics/ideas/questions your work will cover and how this relates to the themes in this open call, the form/style/tone the work will be written in, and any key references or preexisting work you are building on;
- & 2-3 samples of previous work which are relevant in content or style to your submission.
As our previous issue featured some visual work, we just want to reiterate that we are very unlikely to accept visual submissions such as illustration, photography, painting, collage and so on. Any visuals will need to be suitable for reproduction in single colour risograph printing.
If your submission is accepted, you will receive a commitment letter from us through which we can decide together how to structure the editorial process in a way which best supports you, as well as information about invoicing and more. We are keen to centre your access needs in this process.
All submissions should be sent to stickyfingerspublishing@gmail.com, with ‘GROM #5 Submission’ as your email subject line. In the body of your email please include:
- Your name and pronouns (for internal use);
- A short bio;
- Your work as Word or PDF file, labelled ‘YOUR NAME_TITLE OF WORK’;
- Any images attached as separate JPEGs. Please note imagery will be reproduced in greyscale if included.
We aim to respond within two weeks of the submission deadline, and will be planning to hold the first editorial meetings before the end of the year. This publication will be launched at our Spring Party in 2027.