The theme for 2025: Anthology Call: America as Patchwork Quilt

As Chautauqua looks to 2025, we invite you to explore what it means to be American or to live in this land?

Through various roads, paths, and networks, people become American. Some have always been here. Some people didn’t “come” to America, but were stolen, forced here. Others came looking for opportunity. Some walked endless miles to cross borders seeking refuge. No matter, we settle and make a life. We carry with us things that are important parts of our identity—food and drink, beliefs and traditions, art, commerce, sport, leisure. And hope. 

We build a community. It shapes us just as we shape it. The ancestors, the generations before us, the history of the country all have a hand in molding us. 

Some find a place that feels welcoming, and others find hardness and challenge. We become warp and weft, provide structure and texture, feel the pull and the push, the stitching and unstitching of our humanity. 

We invite you to “say it plain,” as Langston Hughes wrote, to sing your America. Submit your poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, micro-essay, and flash fiction that explores what it means to live in America, to be American. 

Please include with your submission a 50–150 word bio, email and mailing addresses, and any comment you would like to make regarding your submission and the 2025 theme.

Submission Deadline: June 1, 2024