Neon & Smoke: Women Who Burn Gold Star Program Gold Star Free Tip Jar Option

WOMEN WHO BURN

Opens Nov 4 - Nov 27, 2026

The women on these pages exist across time, race, and social class. They have been suppressed, they have been loved, and they have been wronged. What they won’t do is surrender.

Women Who Burn is a collection of women at the edge of desire, of grief, of control, of themselves.

We want women who are messy, complicated, funny, furious, tender, selfish, sensual, reckless, calculating, joyful, grieving, hungry, even strange. Women making terrible decisions for perfectly understandable reasons. Women making the right decisions far too late. Women who leave. Women who stay. Women who want too much, feel too deeply, laugh too hard, or say the thing they were never supposed to say.

And yes, men can absolutely be in their lives. (Unless they wish it otherwise.)

Let them complicate things deliciously. Let them love these women well. Let them misunderstand them completely. Let them help. Let them hinder. Let them bumble through.

But by burning we don't mean rage alone.

Burning is that heat smoldering beneath the surface. It makes these women laugh. It makes them ache. It makes them uncomfortable. It makes them want.

Give us desire, absurdity, obsession, reinvention, revenge, intimacy, liberation, contradiction.

Give us women who don’t realize that they are the fire until it’s mostly too late.

Above all, give us women who feel alive.

This is Neon & Smoke. By this time you know, we like to keep things smoky. (Someone once said, unruly.)

Women Who Burn is the second annual print anthology from Neon & Smoke, tentatively scheduled for publication May/June 2027 and online publication in April 2027.