Disaster-Response Veterans to Bridge Literary Gap

Team Rubicon, an El Segundo, Calif.-based non-profit organization that specializes in deploying military-veteran volunteers to assist in civilian disaster-response efforts, recently announced it would begin an on-line literary journal.

The name, logo, and mission of Team Rubicon all speak to a theme of crossing rivers, and of "bridging the gap."

Through its latest project, the group seeks poetry, prose, photographs, fiction, and other material for inclusion in an inaugural issue of the journal, which is to be published in early 2014.

"If you write deep philosophical treatises, whimsical short stories, reflections on TR deployments or military tours of duty we would like to publish what you have and share it with the TR community," the editors write in the call for submissions.

Elsewhere on that webpage, Team Rubicon volunteer, Iraq War veteran, and English teacher Paul Warmbler posts this personal challenge to prospective writers:

I want you to share your fears, laughs, and tears. Educate and enlighten, provoke thought and meaningful discussion, or whatever motivates you to write.

Use it as an outlet for personal growth and therapy when you are upset, afraid, depressed or thrilled. Write it, put it into word and give it meaning.

We are given the opportunity to become the new bards and story tellers of the world. In my own writing I have tried to capture ghosts from my own memory.

These memories are what binds us, and strangely enough, have the power to release us from our own mental bondage.

Use them.

Submissions do not have to be related to veteran themes. Editors may edit lightly for grammar and clarity, but will not make changes without the writer's consent. Regarding language and content, writers are reminded that non-veterans and the pubic will have access to the final on-line publication.

Writers may ask to have content appear anonymously, or under a pseudonym.

For full guidelines, click here.

Send submissions via e-mail to: litjournal@teamrubiconusa.org

Direct editorial questions via e-mail to: litjournaladmin@teamrubiconusa.org

The Team Rubicon Facebook page can be found here.