Deadline: 10 April 2026, 23:00 (CET)
Submit: short artist bio (max. 150 words) + one textual contribution (max. 1 A4) send per mail to Nadja Kracunovic, sickgirlstrategies[at]proton.me 
 

Formats: poetry, prose, diary entries, dramatic texts, haiku, monologues, notes, jokes, letters, reflections, short stories, and hybrid/experimental forms.
Language: English (other mother tongues are welcome too)
 

*German below*

The call is addressed to those who live with chronic illness, autoimmune diseases, pain, neurological rollercoasters, fluctuating diagnoses, medical labels, or the refusal of them — those who are over-diagnosed, under-diagnosed, misdiagnosed, or navigating the long corridors of medical gaslighting. Here, girl* is understood as a political position rather than a gendered identity. If you recognize yourself in this proposal, regardless of gender, this is for you, girl*.

Selected works will appear in the digital publication Chronic Superpositions & Sick Girl* Strategies (2026) by the artist Nadja Kracunovic. The publication will consist of multiple chapters, and this open call will contribute to the third one. It will serve as a textual space of investigation and of the actual voices of the sick “girls*.” 

Concept

Chronic Superpositions & Sick Girl* Strategies is an auto-theoretical lexicon grounded in the perspective of chronically ill agents who reject binarities and find refuge in distortions, transitions, and mutations of their personal existences. The book embeds feminist and crip theories while distancing itself from medical discourse, proposing autoethnographies as theory, and rejecting heteropatriarchal definitions of health, usefulness, and coherence.

The publication stretches into a collage – a glossary combining theory, poetry, and humor – to explore the infinite possibilities of existence and new maps of the sick girls*: those whose fatigue overflows the neoliberal urge to fix and fit. It draws from reason and unreason, from open wounds and oppressed tongues, from medical gaslighting and personal tears. It navigates between the body’s pervasive, often invisible symptoms and their external perception.

This open call invites writing from within chronic experience: from the preoccupation with symptoms, from bodies that fluctuate and collapse, from neurological rollercoasters, from pain that reorganizes language and time, from what remains invisible to the non-sick. It welcomes texts that emerge from lived superpositions – collecting and archiving survival strategies.

Nadja Kracunovic is looking forward to hearing back from you – in any form.
If you have any questions regarding the open call or want to get feedback, please write to sickgirlstrategies@proton.me

The publication is organized in collaboration with the Pink Dot Gallery Berlin and Thüringer Graduiertenförderung Stipendium from the Bauhaus Universität Weimar.