Call for 2025 Art and Article Submissions
Deadline: Friday, May 31, 2024
ARTICLES
Due to space limitations, submissions may be lightly edited for clarity and concision, with no change to the original intent.
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- 400-500 words max. If you submit a longer piece, we will have to edit for length.
- Poetry is also welcome but needs to be significantly shorter than 400 words to accommodate layout.
- Please include a suggested title.
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- The calendar is 11” tall by 8.5” wide, so art with a ‘portrait’ orientation is preferred. Art need not fit those dimensions exactly.
- We are interested in a diversity of media.
- The calendar is printed in colour and we prefer colour images.
2. ARTISTS: You can send a low-res file as a submission, but if your piece is chosen, we will need a high-res version of it for print (600 dpi).
3. You may send as many submissions as you like. Chosen artists and authors will receive a free copy of the calendar and promotional postcards. Because the calendar is a fundraiser, we cannot offer money to contributors.
Prisoner submissions are due June 14 and can be mailed to:
Certain Days
c/o Burning Books
420 Connecticut Street
Buffalo, NY 14213
ABOUT CERTAIN DAYS
The Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar is a joint fundraising and educational project between outside organizers across North America and current and former political prisoners, including currently imprisoned Xinachtli (s/n Alvaro Luna Hernandez) in Texas. We were happy to welcome founding members Herman Bell and Robert Seth Hayes (Rest in Power) home from prison in 2018, and David Gilbert in 2021, each of whom spent over forty years behind bars. All of the current members of the outside collective are grounded in day-to-day organizing work other than the calendar, on issues ranging from legal aid to community media, radical education to prisoner solidarity. We work from an anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti- capitalist, feminist, queer- and trans-liberationist position. All proceeds from the calendar go to abolitionist organizations working for a better world.
Print a PDF of the 2025 Certain Days Call for Submissions
Certain Days 2024 — Now Only $5
Now in its 23rd year of publication, the Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar is required reading for radicals, leftists, and all who support political prisoners and advocate the end of mass incarceration.
All proceeds support prisoners and grassroots organizations like Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP), Mutulu Shakur legal support, Sundiata Acoli release fund, Palestinian Youth Movement, Burning Books expansion, Puget Sound Prisoner Support, Coalition to Decarcerate Illinois, Appalachians Against Pipelines, Community Resource Initiative- CA, P4W Memorial Collective Prisoners’ Justice Day healing circle, Wet’suwet’en Solidarity Fund, Cascadia Forest Defenders and NorCal Resist.
Each calendar has 12 thought-provoking essays and 12 pieces of beautiful art. You’ll feel inspired every day of the year, with radical historical dates and lots of space for your own plans.
Featuring art or essays by:
Josh MacPhee, Ed Mead, Ricardo Levins Morales, Farhan Ahmed, Dio Cramer, David Gilbert, Taller Ahuehuete, Ryan Fatica, Ruby, Sean Swain, N.O. Bonzo, Eric King, Praxis Vgz, Dominque Conway, Xinachtli, Josh Davidson, Jordan Halliday, Leonard Peltier, Zane McNeill, Jessica Sabogal, Dr. Tolbert Small, Roger Peet, and P!nk Bloc Montréal.
Your group can buy 10 or more for the rate of $10 each (or 50 or more for the rate of $9 each) and then sell them for $15, keeping the difference for your organization. Many campaigns, infoshops and projects do this as a way of raising funds and spreading awareness about political prisoners.
How to Write U.S. Political Prisoners
An awesome short video by Burning Books and Page One collective about the history of the Anarchist Black Cross and how to write political prisoners.