Submissions are OPEN

Ghosts of Gravelly Hill

Tales of a City in Endless Flux

What we are doing

We are inviting submissions for our next print anthology of Midlands writing, The Ghosts of Gravelly Hill. The subject matter we are focussed on is described in detail below. Please read and understand all of these these guidelines before submitting.

Themes

In 1972 the Gravelly Hill Interchange opened for drivers. A major new road junction for the M6, the A38 and the A5127, the project was part of the renewal and upgrading of Birmingham’s entire road system – a renewal first proposed by William Hayward as early as 1918 – building on the back of a wider urban regeneration led by Herbert Manzoni et al, with their (misguided?) modernist sensibilities.

Some might even say it broke the back it was building on.

True, post-WW2 Birmingham was in desperate need of reconstruction, rehousing, repurposing, so why not go for a wholesale restructuring of the city?

Why not plough concrete pathways through the centre, dividing manufacturing neighbourhoods one from the other, and then fill those thoroughfares with cars?

Why not demolish those grotesque Victorian palaces and replace them with high-rises and urban motorways?

After all, in Manzoni’s own words:

“I have never been very certain as to the value of tangible links with the past. They are often more sentimental than valuable... As to Birmingham’s buildings, there is little of real worth in our architecture. Its replacement should be an improvement... As for future generations, I think they will be better occupied in applying their thoughts and energies to forging ahead, rather than looking backward.”

And that’s what The Ghosts of Gravelly Hill is all about: looking back to what we’ve lost; looking to the here and now and what we’ve gained; and looking to the future and what we might become.

These are the dots, how you connect them is up to you. See Story Cues below for more information.

What we want

We want prose. No poetry please.

We want either fiction or creative nonfiction.

We want NO MORE than 2500 words (not including title). There is no minimum word count.

We want a short biography of who you are including how you are linked to the region (see Who Are You? below)

We want original work - no reprints.

We want only ONE submission per person.

NO AI – it must be ALL your own work.

Attach your submission as a Word document to the email (see Where to Send below), and provide a short biography in the body of the email.

Who are you?

We want submissions from individuals with a tangible link to the British West Midlands. What the definition of tangible means we’ll leave to you, but passing through New Street on the way to somewhere else won’t cut it.

Not only do we want you to have that link, we’d like for you to explain it to us. Please include some details in your submission email.

We know this sounds restrictive but our mission is to provide a space for creative output from and about the West Midlands region and Britain’s Second City. We trust you understand.

What we will do

We will read every submission and respond to each writer with our decision. This may include some feedback on what we thought worked well and what needs improvement. For those we accept we will enter into a period of active editing to prepare the piece for publication.

All successful writers whose submitted piece is included in the anthology will receive a free copy of the final book.

What we won’t do

We won’t be considering anything that exceeds the word count, is not tangibly related to the West Midlands, or we feel does not fit the brief as determined by these guidelines.

Where to send

submissions@floodgatepress.co.uk

Make your subject line read like this:

SUBMISSION - GRAVELLY HILL - [YOUR NAME] - [YOUR PIECE'S TITLE]

This will be a slimmer volume than our last anthology Night Time Economy, hence the lower word count.

Deadline

Submit by: March 31st 2026

Story cues

Factory Town, Motor City

Modernists set the template for urban existence in the post-war years: tear down the old and build up the new. Let’s all invite the car into our life! Don’t worry about the noise, pollution and congestion. Industrialisation for the modern world. Bring on Motor City!

How many lives passed through the gates of our factories each day? What became of them and their families when that industry collapsed just a short decade or two later?

When did we wake up to the dissatisfaction of our lives revolving around the car and tarmac highways? When did we realise that we had naively put the road first and the human spaces beneath them like dirty and functional warrens?

Think About Layers

Spaghetti Junction is a place of layers.

Beneath the cars: concrete. Beneath the concrete: the steel and stone of the railway bridge. Beneath that: the venerable canal; and beneath and alongside that: the re-channeled rivers in their dingy gulleys and tunnels.

And beneath all that? The Roman ruin? The Anglo Saxon hoard? Or maybe just the latter-day archeology of the plastic bottle and the ring pull?

Cities as the Ship of Theseus

How much does the Birmingham of today (and the Midlands in general) remember of its pre-Manzoni identity? Or last week’s? How much of the genius loci of the city is retained through its constant change? How do fresh destructions and new developments become integrated into the city’s spirit? What does it take for some new skyline feature to go from eyesore to beloved? What is left in the collective memory of the places we have lost? What is meant by renewal now?

Home

A wider context to consider is about home: leaving home, returning home, building a home. What of the uniqueness of the City do you take with you when you leave? What do you introduce into the city when you return? Is the home you return to the same home as the one you left?

We have chosen Gravelly Hill and Spaghetti Junction as the emblem for these themes. Where will you choose? How will you express the states of flux in this city of so many people and the memories they hold?

Place and People

This is the most important point.

We’ve talked here a lot about place, but all writing is ultimately about people. How do your characters fit into the shape of the city? How are they shaped by it? Why do they love or hate it? How would they change it? What do they remember and what would they rather forget? Have they left and come back to a place that’s unrecognisable (for good or ill)? Have they stayed put and watched the world be rebuilt around them?

Consider all the above and send us your best piece of fiction or creative non-fiction!

Best of luck.

Floodgate