When Everything I Have Is Blue: Short Fiction by Working-Class Men about More-or-Less Gay Life was published in 2005, the anthology was hailed for providing “what no contemporary TV program, movie, or magazine has even come close to—the tender, angry, funny emotional innards of the embattled daily life of working-class gay men” (Minnie Bruce Pratt, author of S/He, Walking Back Up Depot Street, and Inside the Money Machine).

More than that, Everything I Have Is Blue, selected as a finalist for a Lambda Literary Foundation award (“the Lammies”), was recognized as an opportunity to use creative writing to build connections among working-class queers across race, gender, and region.

Everything I Have Is Blue has been out of print since 2009, and Four Cats Press is pleased to announce that in 2013 it will publish a new, expanded edition of the anthology: Still Blue: More Writing by (for or about) Working-Class Queers.

Still Blue continues what Everything I Have Is Blue started. It is a showcase for imaginative writing: short fiction, memoir, performance pieces, work that doesn’t fit the categories. Still Blue seeks to illuminate working-class-queer realities, struggles, and resistance to assimilation and mental gentrification.

In addition, Still Blue includes:

• an annotated bibliography of more than 400 items, including fiction, memoirs, scholarly articles and social science research, film, poetry, theater, and other materials related to working-class queers and working-class studies
• “A Blue Study: The Reader’s, Writer’s, and Scholar’s Guide to Blue, Too,” which includes a reader’s guide to each story in the collection, discussion questions, and writing prompts for creative writers

The Call: New Writing Sought!

Still Blue is currently seeking submissions of working-class writing by women, men, and all other genders.

There are no limits regarding subject matter or form except for the following: Please do not submit erotica. (Writing that is sexually explicit is certainly acceptable; writing whose chief purpose is to function as “erotica” is not). In addition, Still Blue cannot use genre fiction.

Submit your writing to Four Cats Press (stillblue@fourcatspress.com) as an email attachment formatted in Word. Include a short biography.

Meanwhile, the online web project “Still Blue: More Writing By (For or About) Working-Class Queers” is ongoing, and some work may be considered for those pages as well.