YA Stories Mission Statement
YA Stories is a brand-new addition to The Unapologetic Voice House dedicated to the cultivation and publication of young voices. At The Unapologetic Voice House we are committed to uplifting female-driven stories, and in this new division, we publish Young Adult fiction written by—and for—young adults.
Open Call
Are you a teenager or a pre-teen? Are you sick of reading characters written by adults, who despite their best efforts, have no memory of what it’s like to actually be young? You’re shown stories about your age group all the time, but how often do these tv shows, movies, and books have characters that feel real?
Here’s the problem: almost every book in the Young Adult genre is written by adults. At YA Stories, a new division of The Unapologetic Voice House, we have a solution—we want to give you, the next generation, a chance to have your voice heard. And that is why we are having an OPEN CALL for Young Adult fiction written by—and—for young adults.
We are seeking short stories for an anthology titled After the Nova with a theme of mental health and/or self reliance in the genre of dystopian science fiction. The anthology will feature 20-25 stories written by youth aged 11 to 17 years old, and within the category of Young Adult fiction.
At The Unapologetic Voice House, we believe in youth, and we believe in you.
Guidelines around the anthology submission
- To be considered for publication in the anthology, you are welcome to submit a short story online. Short stories must be between 1,500 – 2,000 words in length. Stories must be written within the genre of science fiction, with a setting in a dystopian world. Maintaining with the mission statement of The Unapologetic Voice House, we prefer that our stories highlight strong female voices.
- Submit your story by clicking on the link below and either pasting your story into the form or typing your story directly into the form.
- You must have your parent or legal guardian’s permission to submit a story, and if your story is selected you and your parent or legal guardian will need to sign a legal contract called a license agreement. The submission form asks you to identify a parent or legal guardian by name and provide their email address. If you do not provide this information at the time of submission, unfortunately we cannot consider your submission for publication.
- We are looking for original, unpublished stories for our anthology series. We define “original” as your own original written work to which you have all of the necessary rights and permissions to grant The Unapologetic Voice House a license to use the work in the anthology as described herein. We define “unpublished” as never having been published on social media, in a magazine or on a blog or in a book before.
- Our Open Call Submission opens March 4, 2021 and has been extended to April 25, 2021. Participants selected for After the Nova will be notified by May 1, 2021 that their story has been selected.
- If your story is selected for publication in the anthology, you and your parent or legal guardian will be required to sign a license agreement which gives The Unapologetic Voice House non-exclusive rights to publish your story. This means that you will retain copyright ownership of your story but grant us the rights to publish it in the anthology and to use it again for certain other purposes, such as marketing the anthology.
- Young contributing authors will be compensated $25 per story at the time of publication of After the Nova. Young contributing authors will also receive a byline in the anthology book. The Unapologetic Voice House will manage the project and will be communicating with contributing authors and their parent or legal guardian throughout the process of the book.
- The Unapologetic Voice House will pay for the book to be edited, designed and published and no other fees will be transferred to contributing authors or their parents or legal guardian.
- The Unapologetic Voice House will distribute After the Nova to its retailer channels in both a print book and an ebook and it will be available for purchase at Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Hoopla, KOBO and many more.
SUBMISSIONS NOW CLOSED