Fault Zone: Faultless?
Authors! Welcome to the eleventh edition of CWC-SF Peninsula’s Fault Zone anthology. We invite you to summon from your imagination, life story, and writer’s craft new and creative works sparked by this year’s theme: Faultless?
Pay special attention to the question mark. We’re not looking for stories of perfect lives, perfect people, or poetry that marches in rigid perfection.
In our modern world, we’re driven by excess expectations, chastised if we’re not the Cream of the Crop, Best of the Best. But is anyone or anything fault-free? Earthquake faults appear everywhere, not only in California. Our interactions with our fellow humans—and the other life-forms on our planet—are rife with error, correction, and retries. How do we come to terms with imperfection? Or is it our faults that make us who we are, and our loved ones the people we treasure? Is there value to the jolts our land gives us from time to time? Would we even exist if evolution hadn’t taken advantage of seeming faults in genetic codes
Submission of works rooted in California, especially our own northerly segment of the state, are encouraged, but that’s not a requirement for submission. We welcome fiction that encompasses adventure, history, comedy, romance, nature, fantasy, science fiction, magical realism, and stories that feel as though they must be real. For memoirists, creative nonfiction brings insights—heartfelt, humorous, or hard-hitting—based in real-world personal history. For poets, structure forms a framework for creative growth while unstructured poetry brings illumination in new ways.
The Fault Zone series has evolved to become a developmental anthology. This means that each selected piece is accepted provisionally—and a key part of the publication process is a period of revision. During this time, the author works with the anthology’s crack editorial team to refine their work … not to remove faults, but to draw out everything we can to help the author fully realize their goal for the piece.
Because of the character of this anthology, entries are limited to registered members of the San Francisco Peninsula branch of the California Writers Club. Those who are not members are enthusiastically encouraged to join—the club offers workshops, networking, and invaluable opportunities to grow as a writer.
Authors will not receive payment for their work or personal copies, although all club members receive a steep discount in the book’s purchase price. It is understood that participation in this developmental project is the reward. Royalties earned by the publication of the anthology will be used by the club to serve its mission of Writers Helping Writers. Publication will be managed through a standard publishing agreement under which, for the first year of publication, Fault Zone will have the exclusive right to publish the piece. This is a typical requirement for professional publications; part of the developmental aspect of this project is learning to work in the professional setting. Authors and team members are expected to promote the book. To see a sample contract, please reach out to the editorial team.
There is no entry fee to submit to Fault Zone. Current members are encouraged to renew for the 2024-25 year before submitting and all are reminded that they need to retain membership through 2025-26.
Each member may submit up to four entries in total, and these may be a mix of poetry and prose. No more than two pieces by a particular member may appear in a given edition of Fault Zone. If you submitted a piece to a prior Fault Zone and it wasn’t selected, set that one aside. Send us something new!
SUBMISSION PERIOD: July 1, 2024 – October 31, 2024
PUBLICATION DATE: December 1, 2025
Multiple entries: Submit each piece separately, with the strictly-limited exception of the special case for poetry, a set of three haiku, which will be evaluated as a set.
DO NOT combine multiple entries into a single submission. If you do so, we will consider only the first item in the file.
Simultaneous Submissions: Please do not submit elsewhere while we are evaluating your work for Fault Zone. If you decide to send it elsewhere, please withdraw your submission. Thanks for understanding!
Submission guidelines
PLEASE FOLLOW ALL OF THE GUIDELINES. IF YOU NEED HELP, ASK.
All submissions must be original to the author and may not have been previously published. In this context, “published” means any form of publication including: an anthology, a book, a print or online magazine, posting to a blog, social media, or personal website. If unsure, consider: could the location the work appears possibly be subject to copyright? Is it publicly accessible? Seen by people you didn’t share with personally? If so, then first publication rights have already been granted, so it’s not suitable for Fault Zone. Save that piece for your own upcoming retrospective collection.
Generative AI (ChatGPT, CoPilot, etc.) may not have been used in the creation of the work. For practical purposes, we exclude typical assistive tools such as grammar checkers and spell checkers. We understand that using research tools such as Chrome or Bing inevitably engages AI-based search engines, but if you refrain from prompts such as “Please outline a short story showing how it’s ok to have some faults.” you should be … OK. If you are experimenting with genAI for your creative work, again, please save those pieces for your own publications. If you’re unsure what we mean, please reach out to the editorial team and ask.
Length:
Poems of up to 100 lines will be considered. Structured poetry is encouraged—look for new and interesting structures to spark your creativity. However, as always, unstructured poems are also welcome. Up to three related haiku may be submitted in one document as a single entry with a provisional identifying title, e.g., “Three Haiku Using the Word Chartreuse”.
Creative nonfiction and fiction works of up to 3,000 words will be considered. We recommend aiming for an upper limit 2,500 words, as that will give working space for further development during the revision process.
File type: doc, docx, or rtf. If you use Word 2016, please save your file in rich text format (rtf) and submit the rtf version. Submissions in any other format, including pdf, will be declined unread.
Use standard manuscript format. Good formatting helps your story shine—it’s worth the effort. Here are the basics; see below for more help.
12-pt. type, Times New Roman
Prose must be double-spaced, poetry may be single- or double-spaced
For shaped poetry, include a note in your cover letter to let us know you are aiming for such an effect, and designate your genre on the manuscript as “shaped poetry”
1-inch margins
Indent first line in each paragraph
Do not use tabs to indent
Do not use carriage returns to create page breaks
One space after periods
Number every page after the first in the header; use automatic numbering
Place the title in the header
Title centered on first line
Specify submission category on the first page, preferably at upper right
For detailed help on manuscript formatting, including short story and poetry templates you can download and use with confidence, see: https://cometarytales.com/resources/
Provide a brief cover letter with your personal information, the name of your piece, its submission category (poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction) and length. If you are a member of the Fault Zone team, please mention your role—this will not affect selection, but if a piece is selected it may guide assigning your editor during the revision process. If you would like the story published under a pseudonym, make it clear in your cover letter which name is your real name and which your pen name. The cover letter (which reveals your identity) will not be taken into account during selection. If accepted, you will be asked to provide a bio and other information related to your piece.
If you need any specific accommodations, please let us know in your cover letter. Submissions from authors with disabilities are welcomed; we want to be sure we communicate and work with you effectively. Any such information will be held in confidence unless you request otherwise.
Anonymize your submission. This means your name (including any pen name) should not appear anywhere in the manuscript, not even headers or footers. Your name will be registered by Submittable. Be sure to include your personal name, any pen name (be clear which is which), and reliable contact information (email at a minimum), in your cover letter.
No simultaneous submissions.
Questions?
If you have a question that is NOT ANSWERED BY THESE GUIDELINES, please email the current editorial team at faultzone.cwc.sfpeninsula@gmail.com and we’ll get back to you as quickly as we can.