¡CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS!

Fifteen Candles: 15 Tales of Taffeta, Hairspray, Drunk Uncles, and other Quinceañera Stories. An anthology from Rayo, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Edited by Adriana Lopez

Publication date: Summer, 2007

Deadline for Pitches: June 26, 2006. Please include a 1 page story idea, a bio note, and information on previous publications.

As hard as you may have tried to forget that nightmarish Quinceañera your parents forced you to have or perhaps you really wanted for ambitious reasons of your own---this anthology will smack you in the face with those white taffeta tainted memories. We're looking to ensemble a collection of 15 kitsch-filled, humorous first person tales about this beloved and sometimes over-the-top Latino coming-of-age ceremony. We'd like to know if yours was a disaster, if you attended aQuinceañera party that ruined your sense of reality or good taste, if you deflowered the Quinceañera in the bathroom (or were yourself at your own Quince), if your Uncle was hitting on all the Quinceañera's friends, or if any particularly laugh-out-loud Quinceañera experience(either your own or one you attended) has marked you for life. We want to capture the essence of this ceremony, in all its glory-- both good and bad, but ALWAYS funny.

Think weird--like scenes out of John Waters' Hairspray, think David Sedaris and Dress Your Family in Denim and Corduroy, think Sofia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides. Think your colorful aunts, with their ten feet high hairdos, dirty dancing with your 15- year-old guy friends to Madonna's "Like a Virgin." You know, images from our past that make up who we are and which make us giggle after weve all had a few cocktails. For a sense of the voice were aiming for, please check out Bar Mitzvah Disco (Crown, 2005).
ESSAY LENGTH: 7,000 words

EMAIL: adrifrida@yahoo.com

SUBJECT LINE: Quinceañera Pitch

PAYMENT: $1,000. Upon publication

RIGHTS: World

FINAL DEADLINE: August 7, 2006

About the editor

Adriana Lopez is a writer and editor based in New York City. She was the founding Editor of Críticas magazine, Publishers Weeklys sister publication on the Spanish- language publishing world and served as the spokesperson for the Association of American Publishers (AAP) LatinoVoices for America initiative. Lopezs work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Time Out, Black Book, Latina, among other publications. Her non-fiction essays have appeared in Border-Line Personalities: A New Generation of Latinas Dish on Sex, Sass & Cultural Shifting (HarperCollins, 2004), Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Todays Feminism (Seal Press, 2002) and Hopscotch: Latin American Cultural Review (Duke University Press, 2000). Her latest short story will appear in a fiction collection of Latina writers coming in 2007 from Simon & Schuster. She is a member of PEN America.