Disability: The Revolution! 

Special Issue Call for Submissions 

Revolution: from the old French revolution, originally referring to the motion of the stars. Later versions of the word in the 15th century played on this sense of cyclical revolving — in the changing of the seasons, but also — crucially — the revolving of the wheel.  

What does revolution look like from a disability standpoint? How do we remember that disabled writers just taking up space is revolutionary? How do we, as disabled writers, consider that question of the wheel and its many manifestations — literal, temporal, and symbolic? How do we celebrate it, remake, and open ourselves to the revolution, ongoing and future, that must usher in a more accessible world?  

For our Summer 2026 issue, The Fiddlehead seeks work from disabled writers on the theme of revolution. You can interpret the theme as broadly as you like. If you identify as disabled and would like to answer this call, please submit! We would love to hear from you.  

Send us your fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and review pitches that call for change — change in the world we know and change in the world that might come to be. How can the innovation that drives disabled experiences also help to drive a new and better world? What might a world beyond the revolution look like, especially for disabled people?  

Imagine new worlds with us — worlds far away, and the world that waits close in our future.  

The issue will be overseen by disabled author and activist Amanda Leduc, who will also serve as the fiction editor alongside poetry editor Phillip Crymble, nonfiction editor Therese Estacion, and reviews editors Grace R. Taylor and Christine Wu. 

In an exciting first for The Fiddlehead we are creating audio narration for this special issue, and we are in conversation with the Centre for Equitable Library Access (CELA) to offer even more formats for maximum accessibility. 

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS 

The general rule of only submitting once per calendar year does not apply to the Disability issue.  

For purposes of this issue, you may submit once in all three categories. Please submit as per the guidelines below (one story, one essay, and no more than 6 poems). 

Fiction Submissions: 

• A submission should be one story, double-spaced, a maximum of 6 000 words, and in a legible font.  
• Pages should be numbered.   
• At the top of the first page, include the story’s title and word count.  
• If your story is less than 1000 words, you may include a second submission that is also shorter than 1000 words. This submission should start on a new page and include the title and word count at the top of that page.  

Creative Nonfiction Submissions: 

Creative nonfiction (CNF) is construed widely and can include personal essays, narrative non-fiction, think pieces, etc. Check out the Creative Nonfiction Collective Society’s definition here. 

• A submission should be one CNF story, double-spaced, a maximum of 6 000 words, and in a legible font.  
• At the top of the first page, include the story’s title and word count.  
• Pages should be numbered. 
• If your CNF story is less than 1000 words, you may include a second submission that is also shorter than 1000 words. This submission should start on a new page and include the title and word count at the top of that page. 
• If you have images (pictures, graphs, drawings, etc.), we are happy to consider them but you must have written permission to use them from the creator in a publication before you submit to us. AI-generated images will not be considered.   

Poetry Submissions: 

• A poetry submission should be single-spaced.  
• It can be no more than 6 poems and no more than 12 pages in total.  
• Pages should be numbered. 
• Each poem should begin on a new page with the title of the poem at the top of the page.  
• If a poem continues onto more than one page, please note at the top of that page that the poem has continued.

The Fiddlehead is seeking book review pitches for Disability: The Revolution!, our Summer 2026 issue. We welcome pitches from disabled Canadians about Canadian books centred on disability in any of its many forms.    

Please send us pitches of 250 words or fewer. Include the title of the book, the author’s name, the year it was published, and the publisher (if applicable). Your pitch should also outline why you want to review the book and offer an overview of what you wish to discuss.  

The book you review must be by a disabled author and should focus on disability in some aspect. The book must also be by a Canadian author or be published by a Canadian publisher. Self-published books will be considered if they are widely available.  

We aim to have a variety of reviews exploring different disabilities as well as intersectionalities (i.e. BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+, and low-income disabled authors).  

If we are interested in your review, we will reach out by December 5, 2025. A draft of your book review will be due in early February. The finished review should be approximately 1000 words. All book reviews will be edited by Grace R. Taylor and Christine Wu.  

All The Fiddlehead’s past book reviews are available on our website. If you would like to see the kinds of reviews we publish, feel free to read a review or two! 

https://thefiddlehead.ca/features/book-reviews  

$2000 CA for Best Poem!

          Good luck to all entrants. This year's contest deadline is Monday, December 1, 2025 (postmarked for mailed entries and 11:59 pm Pacific Time for Submittable entries). Our judges this year are Douglas Walbourne-Gough, T. Liem, and Bertrand Bickersteth. 

 

Douglas Walbourne-Gough
Douglas Walbourne-Gough is a poet and mixed/adopted status member of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation from Elmastukwek (the Bay of Islands), Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). His poetry and reviews have been published throughout Canada, and his poetry has garnered several awards and grants. His first collection, Crow Gulch, was published with Goose Lane Editions in 2019, has been nominated for several awards, and won the 2021 EJ Pratt Poetry Award. In 2024, his chapbook Colour Work was published with Anstruther Press and, later that year, he published his second collection, Island, also with Goose Lane Editions. Island centres around the Newfoundland Mi’kmaq experience in the wake of the Qalipu enrolment process, and was shortlisted for the 2025 J.M. Abraham Poetry Award. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing (UBC Okanagan) and a PhD in English/Creative Writing (UNB Fredericton). 

T. Liem 
T. Liem is the author of Slows: Twice (Coach House 2023), and Obits. (Coach House, 2018). Their writing has been published in Apogee, Plenitude, The Boston Review, Grain, Maisonneuve, Catapult, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. They live in Montreal / Tio’Tia:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territories.

Bertrand Bickersteth
Bertrand Bickersteth is the 2024-2025 Writer in Residence for Athabasca University. He is the author of the multi-award winning The Response of Weeds and the forthcoming Canadian Colored. His current project features the history of Black cowboys in western Canada. He lives in Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary) and teaches at Olds College, both in Treaty 7 Territory.

Contest General Rules and Information:

 

• Entries must be original and unpublished. No simultaneous submissions and no previously published (or accepted for publication) submissions. This means that an entry must not be under consideration elsewhere for publication, nor accepted elsewhere for publication, nor entered in any other contest. Work that has appeared on the internet (e.g., online magazines, blogs, or social media sites) is considered published for the purposes of this contest and is ineligible.
• An entry must be the original work of the person who is submitting it and the name and contact information provided must be the author’s. Contest entries should be submitted under the author’s real name. If you use a pseudonym for your published works, you will have a chance to inform the editor of this should your work be selected by the judges
• All entries must be submitted by mail or via Submittable. This year's contest deadline is Monday, December 2, 2024 (postmarked for mailed entries and before 11:59 pm Atlantic Standard Time for Submittable entries). No faxed or emailed submissions are allowed.
• The Fiddlehead will not read work that is ableist, misogynistic, queer-phobic or racist.
• No revisions or changes may be made to an entry once you have submitted it. So please carefully check your entry before you enter it into the contest.
• Judging for the contest is anonymous. Do not put your name or contact information or other identifying information (e.g., publishing pseudonyms) anywhere on your actual entry. For mailed entries place your name and contact information on an accompanying cover page along with information about the submission requested below. For Submittable entries, there will be a place on the Submittable form for your name and contact information.
• One poetry entry is up to 3 poems; no more than 100 lines per poem, including blank lines. If a poem is longer than one page, please make sure that each page is numbered and has the poem’s title in the header. Each poem should start on a new page. Poems may be single spaced. For mailed entries the title and the number of lines for each poem should be noted on the cover page. For Submittable entries, the title and the number of lines for each poem should be noted in the Submittable form.
• The entry fee for your first entry depends on where you are living. If your address is in Canada, then the fee for first entry is $35 CAD. Additional entries after that first contest entry are $10 CAD. If you do not live in Canada, then the fee accounts for the exchange rate and is $50 CAD (approximately $40 USD) for the first entry and $10 CAD for additional entries.
• You must submit a first entry (and pay the first entry fee) before submitting an additional entry. If you submit an additional entry without first submitting that first entry, your entry may be disqualified, and the entry fee will not be returned.
• You will receive a one-year subscription to The Fiddlehead with your first entry. New subscriptions will start with the next issue published after the contest closes. Already a subscriber? — you'll receive a one-year extension to your current subscription. Additional entries do not receive an additional subscription or subscription extension.
• The Fiddlehead occasionally swaps its subscription list with other literary organizations. If you don't wish to be included in such exchanges, please state this on your entry's cover page.
• The contest winner will be contacted directly (by either email or telephone) 2-3 months after the contest deadline. Other entrants will not be individually contacted about the results. Authors’ names and the titles of the works that make a shortlist of 10-15 will appear on The Fiddlehead website. The winner will be announced on the website and on The Fiddlehead social media spaces at a later date.
• The winning entry will be published in issue #307 of The Fiddlehead and on our website. There is a publication payment in addition to the contest prize. The current publication payment rate is $65/page.
• The winner will be interviewed. The interview will be published on The Fiddlehead website when the issue featuring the winning piece is published.
• An entry will be disqualified (no matter at what stage in the contest process it is at), if it is discovered that an entry has violated the contest rule on simultaneous submissions, prior publication, or original authorship. The entry fee will not be reimbursed; however, the entrant will still receive the one-year subscription if the entry was an initial entry.
• An entry may be disqualified (no matter at what stage in the contest process it is at), if it is discovered that the author entered that entry as an additional entry and never submitted and paid for a first entry. The entry fee will be not be reimbursed; and if a subscription was started in error, it will immediately be cancelled.
• You can only upload ONE file when entering via Submittable, (pdf, doc or .docx preferred; rtfs acceptable). Do not include a cover letter or bio as part of that file. Cover letters and bios will be deleted from any entry file.
• Remember only use the additional entry category IF you have already submitted and paid for a first contest entry.

For mailed entries:
          Please send mailed submission to:
The Fiddlehead
            Campus House
            11 Garland Ct
            University of New Brunswick
            PO Box 4400   
            Fredericton NB  
            E3B 5A3  
            Canada
Please make cheque payable to The Fiddlehead.

For Canadian addresses, the price for this single issue is $23 CAD

Please email fiddlehd@unb.ca if you would like to order an earlier back issue or if you would like to bundle several back issues together.

Prices include $5.00 shipping and handling.

For Canadian addresses, the price for this single issue is $23 CAD for American addresses and $28 CAD for all other International addresses

Please email fiddlehd@unb.ca if you would like to order an earlier back issue or if you would like to bundle several back issues together.

Prices include $5.00 shipping and handling for American addresses and $10.00 for International addresses.

 

For US addresses, the price is $17 USD, and outside of North America, the price is $22 USD.

Please email fiddlehd@unb.ca if you would like to order an earlier back issue or if you would like to bundle several back issues together. 

Prices include shipping and handling.

For Canadian addresses, the price for this single issue is $23 CAD

Please email fiddlehd@unb.ca if you would like to order an earlier back issue or if you would like to bundle several back issues together.

Prices include $5.00 shipping and handling.

For Canadian addresses, the price for this single issue is $23 CAD for American addresses and $28 CAD for all other International addresses

Please email fiddlehd@unb.ca if you would like to order an earlier back issue or if you would like to bundle several back issues together.

Prices include $5.00 shipping and handling for American addresses and $10.00 for International addresses.