Welcome to Imbolc this week!

The Celtic calendar celebrates this festival poised midway between the winter and spring solstices, as a time to embrace early shoots as light returns. So with a nod to our Irish roots, the editors at Space Cat Press are cultivating new directions with a green theme for our 2023 Anthology. Here’s a first glimpse, ahead of our submission window opening between Mid-March to May 2023. Look out for #WritingTheForest on our social media.

Photo by Siobhan Logan

From Space to the Forest

In the last few years, we’ve published four books, each one blending various genres with an obvious space theme. So we’ve explored the Space Race, rocketeers, Aliens and Otherness, comets and the origins of the solar system, and so on. This year, at first glance, our theme looks Earthlier in nature. We will be inviting writing that moves Into the Forest. But we hope you will be imaginative about where that takes you, including possible off-world adventures. And we look forward to the usual mix of stories of all kinds, poetry, creative non-fiction and flash fiction too.

Photo by Siobhan Logan

Eco-writing

Our choice of theme is partly inspired by some of the wonderful writing we’ve published in our previous Space Cat anthologies. There’s been a clear eco-strand running through and we wanted to lean into that with a green theme this year. While precious wildernesses yet remain, we know further tree planting may prove crucial in protecting our beleaguered planet and its species. At the same time, our forests are green flags for ongoing destruction and the wild fires of climate change. So reflect on what our planet’s forests have meant to humanity, now and in the past.

Photo by Siobhan Logan

Space Trees

This Into the Forest theme builds on the immersive world-building we’ve seen in the anthologies. And we welcome pieces that move in a sci-fi or speculative direction. Perhaps your forests are thickets on another planet. Or maybe they are structures found out in deep space, either naturally formed or products of an alien technology. Your woods could also be cyber-trees, encountered only in a virtual or electronic world. Let your imaginings be as wild as an ancient woodland in space.

Photo by Siobhan Logan

Forest Fables

Equally, you could plunge into a fantastic forest, with its twisted roots in the fables told by firesides centuries ago. Or seeding entirely new tree sprites, woodland creatures and monsters. What lurks in the shadows when your characters stray from the path? Is your forest a world that inverts all the rules and norms of urban society, a space to escape to or to fear? (Editors’ note here – we enjoy some mild horror – see our Severed Souls anthology – but are too squeamish for full-on horror).

Photo by Siobhan Logan

Urban Jungles

We hope our writers will also be sensitive to the place of trees in our cities, those green patches we all turned to for solace during the pandemic. Whether it’s a local park, a small grove on a traffic island, an urban cemetery or a suburban avenue, look to where green roots break through the concrete. Or maybe, the ‘concrete jungle’ is the metaphor you want to inhabit. We’d love to see what urban noir writers might do with our Into the Forest theme. Providing it’s not too gory … 

Photo by Siobhan Logan

So there are lots of possibilities there for all genres, from fiction to poetry to memoir or creative travelogue. Right now, we are putting together a series of #WritingTheForest prompts and blogs to help inspire you. And these will be released weekly, once the submission window opens on March 10^th  2023. For now, listen to the rustling beyond, watch what signs those bare branches are making against the winter skies. Take a walk into the trees and let your imaginations loose…