The Unstable Realities Anthology
Unstable Realities is the third anthology in GossamerWight’s 2026 series – four linked anthologies forming a year-long literary arc. Read about the full arc here.
Submission window: Wednesday 1 July-Monday 31 August.
Planned publication: last week of September.
Arc role: collapse / aftermath (ontological fracture*).
Emphasis: New Weird, speculative reality shifts.
Shadow / light balance: dread / possibility.
Uncanny Regimes explored the collapse of social and political structures. Unstable Realities goes deeper – into the fracture of reality itself.
This is the anthology of perception, of doubt, of worlds that shift beneath the feet of those who inhabit them. It draws on the New Weird tradition and on speculative fiction at its most philosophically searching: work that asks not only what is happening, but whether what is happening is real, and what reality means when the ground will not hold still.
*A note on ontological fracture: by this we mean a break or split in the very nature of reality – a state in which the rules of existence no longer feel stable, singular, or trustworthy.
What we seek
For Unstable Realities, we seek work in which reality itself splits, shifts, or contradicts itself – so that the world no longer feels fixed, singular, or reliable. Streets rearrange themselves. Histories disagree. Ghosts remember futures. Translations never quite match, and cause and effect thin at the edges.
What we are drawn to
➤ Sustained, uncanny destabilisation rather than single twist endings.
➤ Awe alongside dread – moments of strange beauty, wonder, or possibility surfacing through the disorientation.
➤ Characters who respond not only with fear but with curiosity, resilience, care, and hard-won hope in an unreliable world.
What we welcome
We welcome prose, graphic narratives, poetry, experimental, and multilingual work – with a particularly warm welcome for experimental, hybrid, and typographically inventive pieces, and for multilingual submissions with an accompanying English translation.
Play with perception. Let your characters doubt what they know.
Unease and uncertainty are essential to the uncanny.
Subvert tropes. Challenge assumptions. Surprise us.
Some guiding ideas (optional prompts)
A town where each resident remembers a different version of the same event – and all of them are, in some sense, true.
A building whose layout changes subtly every night, rewarding those who adapt and quietly erasing those who do not.
A translation device, oracle, or archive begins importing documents from other realities, rearranging this one in the process.
Parallel selves or timelines bleed together; photographs rewrite themselves; diaries refuse old entries; ghosts recall futures that haven’t happened.
How we assess submissions
Relevance
Engagement with ontological, perceptual, and psychological themes; freshness of approach.
Literary quality
Voice, style, and emotional depth; does your piece evoke dread, wonder, disorientation, and possibility?
Structure
How form supports theme and mood.
Originality
Subversion of familiar tropes; invention in concept and execution.
For practical details – submission process, length, and boundaries – please read our General Submission Guidelines.
Ready to submit to our anthology?
Wonderful! The submission window is open; please upload your work via the Anthology Submissions Portal on our website homepage, or email your submission to editor@gossamerwight.com.
Please make sure you include all the information requested in the current anthology’s theme-specific guidance, together with the relevant parts of our General Submission Guidelines.
Once you’ve submitted, we’ll send confirmation:
almost immediately if you use our website portal, or
within three days if you email us.
The ground is shifting. We’d rather be lost in it together.
James, Denver, Toby, and Miggy 🐾
Anthology soundtrack by Audiomania. https://audiojungle.net/user/audiomania