We’re thrilled to finally spill the beans and share that we are working on Campfire Stories: Volume II. This means all new stories from seven more national parks and national scenic trails.
While the first volume of Campfire Stories featured writing from the past 100 years of our national parks, the new Campfire Stories: Volume II will share park stories of today.
With this emphasis on sharing contemporary stories, we are opening up a ‘Call for Submissions’ to invite everyone and anyone to submit stories to be considered for this new anthology. We are looking for creative writing pieces that capture the essence and experience of the following national parks and scenic trails:
Grand Canyon National Park
Everglades National Park
Olympic National Park
Glacier National Park
Joshua Tree National Park
Appalachian National Scenic Trail
Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail
Outside From Within
Like everyone else around the world, our lives came to a screeching halt in 2020 due to the global pandemic. We hunkered down and when we got cabin fever, we retreated outdoors away from others and into the wilds of our own neighborhood. We traversed creeks, observed our neighborhood trees more closely, and discovered new nearby trails. It became an important part of our daily ritual—to move our bodies, to work through the stress and the fear, and to simply take a breath of fresh air and feel cool breezes on our skin. We also rediscovered our appreciation for nature’s wildness. We reckoned with its immense beauty and unpredictability and its ability to both heal and destroy.
Through our social media feeds, we saw images of wild animals exploring and stretching out in the empty parking lots of national parks, perhaps pondering where the people have gone. Our imaginations ran wild picturing what wildlife was doing without us there to see it.
The longer we were indoors, the more we yearned to be back in these majestic parks again.
We watched as some people fearlessly traveled during the most uncertain times, to take advantage of nearly empty parks and trails, while locals found an opportunity to reconnect with these nearby beloved places, now void of people. Then, as the pandemic went on, we saw more and more people emerge from their homes, eager for a change of scenery and using their newfound freedom of working virtually to travel near and far, to seek comfort in the security of being somewhere where others were not.
We observed and read about scores of people who previously never considered a hike in the woods or a walk in the park, who were now discovering the joy and solace that these places can bring. It was then we realized we were itching for new stories, stories that captured the experience of being in our national parks not in the past, but in the present. We yearned to live vicariously through others’ escapes, to experience these magical parks and trails as both first-time and long-time visitors have moved through and touched them. And, we thought about the stories that would be told about this unprecedented time, as well as the ones that we would tell, to our children and our grandchildren when they are older.
We are living in extraordinary times, and felt it needed to be captured. So we decided to create this book.
Stories from Today
For our first collection, we traveled for five months, combing through libraries, archives and used bookstores to find local lore, historic pieces, and published works about each place. For the upcoming Campfire Stories: Volume II, we wanted to instead celebrate and capture the experience of national parks today, so we realized we would need to take a different approach to find these engaging campfire tales.
With this is mind, we’ve opened up a Call for Submissions to reach a broader audience of contemporary creative writers who have written about or would like to write about the featured national parks.
A Focus on Representation
Part of capturing our parks in the present means including stories written by the wonderfully diverse range of individuals who visit and cherish our public lands today, some of whom are often underrepresented in the outdoors community.
When we set out to research the first book, one of our primary goals was to collect stories capturing the essence of each national park and to highlight diverse voices not always represented in the outdoors. As we scoured for these stories in local libraries, archives, bookstores—anywhere we could find written material about each park—we found that the extent of diverse voices was dictated, and limited by, what previous generations deemed important or significant enough to be preserved for future readers.
So, for this new volume, we know there is still an opportunity to collect stories that better represent the tapestry of folks who live in and travel to our treasured national parks. It is our hope that this next collection captures the diversity of experiences and perspectives related to these parks and trails, thus we are seeking and prioritizing writers who are Black, indigenous, LGTBQ or people of color.
We are eager to hear your stories inspired by these wild and wonderful public lands, and ask you to apply and submit either existing work or written samples to be considered for a commissioned new piece. We are even offering a handful of modestly funded trips to national parks.
DETAILS
We are seeking all forms of written storytelling—personal essays, poetry, short fiction, tales, ballads, and more—that capture the essence and highlight the distinctive experiences of each featured park and trail.
Story submissions for Campfire Stories: Volume II will be accepted between February 1 - April 5, 2021. There are a variety of opportunities to be included in this next anthology, which you can read about on our Call for Submissions page.
