A year-long publication for 26 members to engage with, explore, and celebrate that, one day, we will all die. Goes live 21 December 2024, the longest night of the year, and will track the life cycle of the year, closing again on 21 December 2025.
Welcome to the dark side
Memento Mori: Remember you will die. It’s the only certainty we have in life, and yet most of us ignore it, try to hide from it, don’t want to acknowledge it.
And that is not healthy.
This year-long 26 project will act as an outlet for members to explore their relationships with death and dying, with grief, with the darkness. How they do that is open – no dictates on format or word count – as long as it relates to the idea of ‘memento mori’ and is suitable for publication on the open internet.
How it will work
We’re running this a little differently to recent projects:
- It will run for an entire year, acting as an online magazine that publishes at least monthly, based on demand
- It will run on Substack (or similar platform, tbc), to help with discoverability of both the works and 26 as an organisation
- You’ll need to pitch your ideas via this form
- There will be an (informal) editorial committee who will discuss and accept pitches and proposals (want to be involved? Get in touch!)
- As always, there is no payment for this work; this is a 26 creative project open only to members
We’re looking for:
Flash fiction (up to 1000 words)
Creative non-fiction
Personal essays
Journalism
Interviews
Features
(Fictional) copywriting / ads / marketing copy
Reviews
Photo essays
Photo galleries
Interspersed with sestudes / centenas / other poetry as appropriate
Want to pitch something else? Music? Art? We’re open to it!
Alongside the commissioned works, the project will also feature regular writing prompts (both visual and text-based) to help stimulate members’ creative muscles.
Want to help run this project?
Memento Mori: A 26 Publication is the first project led and launched by Lauren McMenemy for 26, but she can’t do it alone! If you’d like to be involved in the editorial committee, get in touch. She’s especially keen to hear from any of our emerging writer members who might never have run a publication before and want to gain that skill.
Pitch your ideas!
Life is short, and we want to launch this on 21 December – so get in and pitch your ideas now! Head to this form and Lauren will be in touch.