The Office of Equity, Inclusion, and Compliance, in coordination with The Writers’ Lighthouse, seeks true stories of experiences with racism from the Shippensburg University family.  Those pieces selected will be included in a volume entitled Say It Loud:  Transformational Tales of Everyday Racism, to be published in the spring and shared with our academic community.  Current students, alumni, faculty, staff, and administrators are invited and encouraged to submit their work for consideration.   

  • Stories can come from any point in your life, and should be limited to 1,250 words.  Email your Microsoft Word file to socialequity@ship.edu by November 30, 2020.
  • In general, short timeframes will afford the best chance to rely on concrete specifics details and offer powerful imagery to reproduce the memory and evoke the emotional impact.  Helping the reader see and hear precisely what you saw and heard is a key to capturing a story well.
  • As in any nonfiction writing, it’s standard to creatively manufacture some details (such as snippets of forgotten dialogue, details of scenery, etc.) so long as you are remaining true to the essential reality of the event.
  • Selected submissions will go through an editorial process that may include minor corrections.  Some writers may be invited to participate in a more substantial revision.  
     
  • Submitting your work is an agreement to have it published and publicly distributed, both in a physical journal form and possibly via electronic media.  You are also attesting that the key incidents and nature of the event are true.
  • We cannot accept anonymous submissions, but the editors retain the right to publish work under a pseudonym.

This volume seeks to illuminate a general audience so others can become more familiar with the realities of racism.  Our goal is to increase emotional intelligence and empathy. If you’re ready to raise your voice, join us in talking about racism so we can, together, diminish its power and impact as we march toward eradicating racism forever. 

Stephanie A. Jirard and Neil Connelly