Siblings: Our First Macrocosm

We invite fiction, memoir, creative non-fiction and poetry exploring the impact of siblings on our worldview throughout our lives. Our families, especially our siblings, provide our first macrocosm. How much do we carry of that experience out into the world as part of our deepest, inchoate expectations of the world or of our selves? Is birth order destiny? How are we shaped by the constellation we're born into, whether dyad or nebula? What is the appropriate sentiment to have towards those with whom we may share only a preponderance of genes and, before we have any choices in the matter, propinquity? Towards those who knew us before we had a sense of self? Towards those who helped us define what we were not as much as what we are? Given the mobility of people in the U.S., relationships between siblings as adults are far more voluntary here than in many other countries and cultures. But that doesn't make the relationships meaningless. It may make them, paradoxically, more intense. Do we ever leave our first responses behind or do we regress at the blink of an eye, a sly grin, a turn of phrase? Does this really change between cultures? We invite writers of all ages and cultures to share fiction, creative non-fiction, memoir and poetry on the theme of siblings—whole, half, step, foster, twins, triplets, sextuplets, or soul, cherished, rejected, reconciled, recently discovered, physically distant or near, living or dead—and the world as we came to know it through these relationships.

Country of Publication

United States