I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.”
Mary Oliver, Summer Day
“To pray is to step inside the mystery of all that we do not know.”
Perdita Finn, The Mysteries of Prayer
In deciding to devote issue 20 to ‘”Prayer,” we were moved in part by the close kinship between prayer and not-knowing. We’re issuing this call at a moment when many of us in North America cannot look away from a sky filtered by wildfire smoke while across the globe, we see flooding, deadly heat, drought. When so much that we are forced to know about the health and wellbeing of the planet can lead us to despair, the realm of possibility and mystery becomes a necessary habitat.
In her essay on Virginia Woolf’s darkness, quoted in our first editorial, Rebecca Solnit writes:“To me, the grounds for hope are simply that we don’t know what will happen next, and that the unlikely and the unimaginable transpire quite regularly.” How could prayer play a role in that transpiring?
Prayer can take many forms. We want to know, in as much detail as possible, what prayer is for you. What does it look, feel, sound like? Is it an act of faith, of devotion, a gesture of yielding, of reciprocity? To whom or what do you pray and why? In these times of extinction how has the act of prayer brought change to your life? If one of your prayers has been answered, how so?
If one purpose of prayer is to express what it means to live and persist with joy in our times – to court the numinous mystery of life – let’s share how we dance, paint, write, draw, walk, sing into the wildness of the unknown.
Send us your poems, essays, hybrid forms, flash fiction/nonfiction—we may publish a collection of short pieces. And send us your dreams!!
DEADLINE: Friday, September 4, 2026
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Dark Matter: Women Witnessing publishes writing and visual art created in response to an age of massive species loss and ecological collapse. It is a home for dreams, visions, and communications with the nonhuman world, especially those with messages for how we might begin to heal our broken relationship to the earth. We welcome writing in all forms and genres as well as artwork in all mediums. All poetry and fiction must be accompanied by notes bridging to the journal’s mission. Context and commentary are required for dreams, visions, and other communications. We welcome submissions by women and nonbinary writers and artists.
Dreams and Visions features dreams, visions, nightmares or communications with nonhuman beings that respond in some way to this era of escalating danger and darkness—and ideally provide clarity and/or guidance. Commentary is required.
In After•Words, writers offer responses to books, films, artwork, cultural events—not necessarily current ones—that they feel make an important contribution to our mission. Responses can be creative—the work may serve as a springboard for the writer’s own reflections—and they can be as brief or as long as they need to be, within our 5,000-word limit.
- Submissions in French and German welcome; we will provide translation.
- 5,000 word limit
- Send as MS Word doc or, for graphics, send a Jpg file (up to 250ppi)
- Send your copy to: Editor@DarkMatterWomenWitnessing.com
* Written materials should be sent as one document. *
If after looking through the current issue, and reading the above submission guidelines, you still have questions about what we publish or how to submit, please click here.