Middle West Press

  Middle West Press LLC , an independent micro-publisher of military-themed and -adjacent literary projects, has issued a call for 300-word proposals regarding craft essays on the writing of Military-themed Science-Fiction and Other Genres. Editors there write: In 2019, we published "Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War," a 250-page anthology featuring tips, techniques, and insights from more than 60 established and emerging authors , each of whom tell stories involving military themes and topics . With this newly proposed project, we are aiming at similar targets, but viewed through a specific scope: how military-writers write and publish creative, genre, and speculative fiction.   For the purposes of this project, "Military-themed Science-Fiction and Other Genres" can be defined to include , but be not limited to: MilSciFi and related/adjacent sub-genres such as Space Opera , Space Marines , Alien Invasion, Space Noir, Post-Apocalyptic, Galactic Empire , ...

In a quietly epic narrative—lashed-together from the author’s life-experiences as husband and father, literary scholar, and U.S. Navy Reserve intelligence officer—Liam Corley’s debut collection of poetry, Unwound: Poems from Enduring Wars , navigates with readers previously unseen frontiers in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). With care and precision, Corley’s poems probe the dark, interior corners of American heroic ideals, marriage, family, and homecoming . In the collection’s titular poem, for example, he delivers “a poem for the other soldiers / citizens who never fired back [...]” He writes: “[...] I see you with a yellow ribbon wound tight around your chest, looking down when asked about the war [...]” For veterans, family members, and other citizens living in troubled times , Corley’s collection provides a beacon of clear-eyed reflection, assessment, and hopes for the future . However we identify—whether wounded or unwounded, civilian or military— this is war poetry for the rest ...