Tag: writing

Ecology of the absurd, South Korea

The Threshold of the Monsoon

!Epic Tomorrows

by YOON JAEMIN

A temporary but urgent call to action! Centre of the Web partner Versy Talks is kindly running a free public online debate about the publishing industry from 21st to 31st May 2026. It does not take long to take part in the debate and state your opinion, and everyone is welcome! Sharing your voice will help boost both COTW and Versy Talks. Please help us grow, so that we can platform diverse and underrepresented voices from around the world. More information can be found here.

There is a certain “myth” about Korean geography and climate, passed down among those born and raised in Korea, though one senses its meaning gradually fading with age. “A peninsula surrounded by seas on three sides.” “A climate with four distinct seasons.” These are deeply familiar notions of the homeland’s nature and landscape for those born and educated in the south of the Korean Peninsula in the latter half of the twentieth century and after. From early childhood, Koreans were taught to recognize the Korean Peninsula and its surrounding islands—the constitutional territory of the Republic of Korea— as “our country,” likened to the shape of a rising tiger. We believed that the 365 days of this fierce tiger-shaped land, roaring toward northeastern China with the Taebaek Mountains as its spine, were painted in the ever-shifting colors of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The “distinct four seasons of the complete Korean nation-state,” stretching from Mount Paektu to Mount Halla, formed one of the foundational images of nation and landscape in the minds of Korean children.

To a certain extent, this was grounded in reality. For more than eighty years, the two governments on the Korean Peninsula have regarded each other with hostility while each claims the tiger-shaped peninsula facing the continent as its homeland. The climate, too, is severe and mercurial. In the central region of the peninsula where I was born and have lived for nearly forty years, every year brings heavy snow and bitter cold during the year’s end and beginning, followed by summer heat soaring well above 30 degrees Celsius from June through August. Such cycles have long shaped the rhythms and lifeworlds of ordinary Koreans like myself. Spring and autumn—the transitional periods between winter and summer—were relatively mild seasons, moments of temporary recovery for bodies and minds exhausted by the brutality of the extremes.

Yet Koreans, myself included, also know that this “myth” is slowly collapsing. Our actual lived experience as Koreans educated and raised in Korea increasingly compels us to doubt it. As is well known, the practical territory of Korea for most Koreans is limited to the land south of the Military Demarcation Line, which stretches in a wavering curve from Baengnyeong Island in the west to Goseong County in Gangwon Province in the east. We were taught to regard Mount Paektu, rising 2,744 meters along the Yalu River bordering China, as “the sacred mountain of our people” and “the highest mountain in our country.” Yet from South Korea there is no way to visit “our territory” on Mount Paektu directly. The only possible route is through China, and even then one may only stand on the land outside the territory effectively controlled by North Korea. For this reason, many South Koreans, myself included, tend in practice to think of Mount Halla on Jeju Island, standing 1,947 meters above sea level, as the nation’s highest peak. The collective imaginary geography of a fierce tiger peninsula divided by the Military Demarcation Line often diverges from the actual geographical sensibilities of Koreans like myself. For South Koreans, whose human and material exchanges with North Korea are completely severed, the Republic of Korea is effectively an island.

There is equally much to say about the climate. “Four distinct seasons”? Controversial though it may sound, I increasingly feel that spring and autumn are disappearing from Korea. The 365 days of the year seem to be collapsing into the two brutal extremes of summer and winter. This is not merely a personal impression. According to the Korea Meteorological Administration, the average annual temperature of the Korean Peninsula rose by 1.6 degrees Celsius over roughly a century, from 1912 to 2020. The rate of warming, moreover, continues to accelerate. Over the past thirty years (1991–2020), summer has lengthened by an average of twenty days, and the trend is expected to intensify further. Rising temperatures have caused spring and autumn to converge into summer. As a result, unlike in the past, we now experience the year as though we pass abruptly from summer into winter, having lost the buffer zones once provided by spring and autumn.

What was it like in the past? Consider Monsoon (1935), a work by the celebrated modernist writer Yi Tae-jun (1904–1978) from colonial-era Korea. The story unfolds at the threshold of summer after spring has passed, during the humid and sweltering season Koreans call the ‘Jangma,’ the East Asian monsoon rains. Traditionally, the monsoon season has been difficult for Koreans to endure. Premodern living spaces on the peninsula, designed primarily to survive the harshest period of the year—the winter—were ill-suited to withstand a hot, humid climate that brought nearly thirty percent of the annual rainfall. The narrator, “I” (effectively Yi Tae-jun himself), feels the same. For a man drifting through colonial Korea under Japanese rule without any real occupation, passing his days idly, the monsoon season is unbearable in every sense. Each morning he must wake to the damp smell of mold clinging to the bedroom, bedding, and bookshelves. His wife suffers as well. The oppressive humidity filling the house aggravates her already frayed nerves over their meager household finances. It is hardly surprising that arguments erupt between them. Irritated by his wife’s nagging, “I” has little choice but to leave the house and wander the streets.

Yet he has nowhere in particular to go. He merely drifts endlessly through the humid, sweltering boulevards of colonial Seoul. Thus “I,” as an anonymous urban subject, surrenders himself to the fluid dynamism of metropolitan space, wandering aimlessly in thought. He hopes to run into friends such as Yi Sang and Gubo—modernist writers of colonial Korea, much like Yi Tae-jun himself—men who share his circumstances. But the city does not permit such encounters. There is no special reason for it. His small gamble of going out that day simply fails. Nothing changes. It is only an ordinary afternoon during the monsoon season, much like all our urban walks.

The reality of Korea in the mid-1930s was deeply complex. The Great Depression had made ordinary life even more difficult. Meaningful employment for Korean intellectuals—second-class citizens within the imperial order—was extremely scarce. The narrator’s wandering through the city captures the unremarkable everydayness of that era. His groundless optimism that he might accidentally meet fellow Korean writers in similar circumstances forms the other side of the same coin as his powerlessness before reality. In Gyeongseong, the colonial capital of Korea and a forward base for the Japanese military’s invasion of China, Koreans endured each day under intensifying ideological repression and growing intellectual humiliation.
And yet, the worst had not yet arrived. The people of colonial Korea were unknowingly waiting for the total-war era of the 1940s that would soon descend upon them. Of course, neither the narrator nor anyone else knew the fate awaiting them. But while strolling through a colonial Seoul outwardly more glamorous and bustling than ever before, “I” suddenly voices a reflection that seems almost prophetic of the catastrophe to come:

“I transferred to the streetcar at Anguk-dong. It may be Anguk-machi now, but it still feels right to call it Anguk-dong. I cannot help but resent how every dong and ri has been entirely transformed into machi. To regulate culture solely according to the efficiency of business is a misguided importation of Nazism. (…) At this rate, in a few years they may even decide that names like Lee, Kim, Park, and Jeong are too disorderly, and find some way to control citizens’ personal names as well.”

Remarkably, this did in fact come to pass only a few years later. Under the military regime’s radical expansionist policies and in the name of Pan-Asianism, the people of colonial Korea were mobilized into the total-war system and forced to adopt Japanese names in place of their Korean ones. Seen in this light, the narrator’s insight is astonishing. Yet he did not seriously predict the future. It was merely a passing thought during an idle urban stroll.

Now, nearly a century later, in the year 2026, I often walk through the old downtown districts of Seoul where Monsoon was set whenever I feel restless. A brutal winter during which I suffered badly from influenza has finally passed, and I am writing this essay at the threshold of a summer that seems to grow shorter every year. Korea will soon enter the monsoon season again. The monsoon is not the harshest season for Koreans. It is unpleasant and melancholy, but it is not the worst. The worst is yet to come. That is what I feel now. Nor is it merely a premonition about the climate. Like Yi Tae-jun before me, I stand at the threshold of the monsoon and sense keenly that the world’s worst days have not yet arrived. What will become of the world ahead? I pray for everyone’s well-being.

AI Tomorrows, DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, FLASH!, Many feminisms, Reflections, South Korea

The Woman Not on Any List

!Epic Tomorrows

by Jo Eunyoung (South Korea, poet); see also Meet Me at Three O’clock at the LerDevagar Bookstore and The Summer We Once Wanted

*******

“Noblesse Matchmaking — we find you the partner you deserve.“

Even past forty, matchmaking agencies still send me messages. Maybe I’m still on their list of women who haven’t — or couldn’t — marry. Maybe it’s just an automated system firing into the void. Either way, I feel two things at once: a small admiration for their persistence, and a faint irritation at still being considered a target. I never delete the messages immediately. I leave them there for hours, as if one day even this might begin to feel urgent.

One day, a younger colleague leaned in close, as if sharing classified information. “Unni, I actually met my husband through a matchmaking agency (gyeolhon jeongbo hoesa: Korea’s paid marriage brokerage service that scores and ranks members by age, education, income, and appearance). You should try it too — I worked really hard at it.” She believed she was doing me a favor. The story of their fated, romantic meeting had apparently been constructed overnight — a tidy narrative designed to erase the fact that it had started with a checklist.

It’s not that I never tried. I dated steadily, loved recklessly. I was a bitch to some and an angel to others, just as certain exes were to me. I broke up and started over, again and again, and somewhere in that repetition, time slipped away — “hulsseok”(the sound Koreans make while swallowing tears).

People offered what they called gentle advice. You studied too long. You were too focused on work. They followed this with their own marriage success stories. A question rose in my throat — so are you actually happy?— but I swallowed it every time. I didn’t want to come across as the bitter unmarried woman, sneering at other people’s choices.

What they said always sounded less like advice and more like self-reassurance: that raising children is nobler than any career, that some men feel burdened by women who think too much, that love is fine but marriage is reality. I listened and nodded. You’re doing so well. I’m honestly envious. It was the kindest thing I could offer.

They say marriage is a choice now. But most people I know — born, like me, in the 1980s — didn’t quite choose it or reject it. They simply married, the way you do things when that’s just what’s done. A small number of us didn’t. Not entirely by choice, but not entirely by accident either. I live in the gap between those two worlds, and sometimes it’s hard to breathe.

I had actually joined that agency years earlier. Even then, in my mid-thirties, I was categorized as high-risk — too old for safe childbirth, too educated to be appealing. My PhD was a liability, they said; men worried I might correct them. They suggested I list only my bachelor’s degree. Still, they found reasons for optimism: I looked younger than my age, I wasn’t overweight, and my voice was soft and pleasant.

Suddenly I was a product approaching its expiration date. A new agency promised AI-based matching, as if intimacy were a logistics problem. When I saw the ad, I thought: I’ve walked into the wrong place entirely.

This isn’t where I belong. Run.

An unmarried woman in her forties. Neither young nor old. Studying literature. On television, forty-something single women are always successful — corner offices and sleek apartments. The term gold miss (a glamorous, financially independent single woman) comes from that image.

But I can’t claim the gold. My degree didn’t translate into salary. I spend my nights revising poems, asking myself: will I ever publish a collection? Will I become the poet I want to be? I am, by most measures, badly out of step with this era.

I can’t join my friends’ conversations about stocks, real estate, their children’s tutoring costs, the latest housing policy. I’ve grown a little strange, just as they predicted. The future still frightens me, but I’ve stopped chasing someone to make that fear quieter. That’s left me lonelier in some ways.

I’ve also stopped obsessing over my weight. I prefer streets with trees to streets with people. I’ve started to understand why middle-aged people photograph flowers. I have no children, but I tend my writing with the same careful attention — softly, gently — and I love it deeply. I take care of myself. I protect my small world.

Then I heard that younger Koreans had coined a term for people like me: yeong-poti (Young Forty: started as a compliment for energetic forty-somethings, now a slur for those who refuse to act their age). I checked myself against the criteria. I don’t wear streetwear brands. I have no money to spend chasing younger company. I didn’t buy property cheaply and profit from rising prices. I wasn’t even pretending to be young. I’ve just never quite grown up, if I’m honest.

In the marriage market: not on the list. Among the targets of generational contempt: not on that list either. Nowhere do I fit neatly into the available categories. For a while, I shrank under the weight of that. The world says it has changed — women’s rights, feminism, marriage as personal choice. In some ways, yes. But I still have one foot in a world that sees my life as a problem, and one foot in a world that has no name for what I am. Too hot, too cold. I move between them, belonging fully to neither.

I live alone. I cook for myself. I write. I handle each poem the way you’d handle something you love — carefully, then carelessly, fighting with it, making up with it, coming back to it again. Sometimes someone looks me in the eyes first, and there is warmth. Not fire, but warmth. Somewhere between the cold bath and the hot one, in that lukewarm in-between place — that’s where I am.

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Exclusive to COTW, India, Scotland

Body Maps

!Epic Tomorrows

By Sreenithi

I loved walking through Edinburgh Old Town, up and down the Mile from crag to castle. I loved walking through Holyrood Park and sitting by the lake. It was called St Margaret’s Loch, and you could spot an entire fleet of swans on the water, looking stately and proud. I was terrified of them though. At close range, you could really see why birds are the last living dinosaurs. But I digress.

Having lived most of my life in the busy, metropolitan Bangalore, I was not used to the idea of walkable cities. Perhaps that is a uniquely European indulgence, making it a great tourist selling point. Bangalore is too big…and too chaotic to be walkable. Need I even mention the hellscape of road traffic that could easily consume your daily commute? 

It wasn’t as though I was out and about every day. Much to my shame, I barely knew my way around my hometown. I mostly stayed indoors, sitting and stewing in my own thoughts and dysfunction. Suspended in grief for over ten years without even realizing it, there was no real sense of normalcy. My family was paralysed too, frozen, and barely getting through each day. I hated being at home, but I struggled to get away.

I didn’t go out for walks. I didn’t learn how to ride a scooty or bike like the other kids to give myself that independence. I didn’t join extra-curriculars or explore sports. The only way I managed to prolong my ‘outside time’ was to hang out with my friends after class. But not for too long, because then I would have to worry about getting back home late, relying solely on unreliable public transport or a known auto uncle from my neighbourhood. Sometimes if I was lucky, a friend would drop me home on his bike.

The thing was, I wanted to get away from home, but I hated going outside. Because I hated myself. I hated my face and my body and my hair and my clothes. I wanted so badly to be seen but I didn’t want to be perceived. But there was something more insidious: I was stuck in debilitating survival mode. The poor city planning and waste management, the collective disregard for traffic rules, the noise and pollution, the fragile bubble of safety (if you’re a girl) – all these were navigable if you had the resourcefulness and a can-do attitude. ‘India is not for beginners’ as the meme goes. You just learn to deal with it as you go, to embody the chaos yourself.

But I was too incapacitated. Too broken and grief-stricken to be a proactive go-getter. Which is why moving countries for my master’s degree was quite a seismic shift. It meant that movement was no longer optional. But it was also no longer hindered. The easy, serene, walkable streets of Edinburgh were an essential scaffolding to get me out of my own head. For the first time in my life, I was going outside on my own terms…every single day. And I loved it! 

Edinburgh was so beautiful to experience. I couldn’t get enough of it. I learned everything I could about this quaint, historic little city. The closes and wynds, the undulating lanes, the view of the hills, the faint speck of sea in the distance, and the perpetual grey sky, all these became etched in my mind’s eye. This was the right place for me – not too big to overwhelm, not too small to suffocate. It was the perfect size to hold fully in my heart. It was the first place that I fell in love with, the first that I chose as home.

But for whatever reason, my journey there was constantly turbulent. For one, I moved house over eight times in a span of just three years. Not to sound too superstitious, but it felt like the city would simply not let me settle. ‘You will not find success here,’ someone at a party said to me once as she did all of our horoscopes. Not too long before that, my childhood grief had burst out of me, delaying my career and jump-starting the healing process rather violently. 

My first job was terrible. I felt so poorly treated that I quit in just four months and I have been unemployed ever since. Perhaps I shouldn’t have visited the castle at the start of my course. But how could I have known? Nobody told me it was bad luck to go there before graduating. There were days when I walked down the streets, sat in buses and parks, crying bitterly, baring my ugly tears to the city. There was even a time when I broke down inside a church, and I am not the religious kind. But things only got progressively worse. It was part of the recovery, but it left me so hollow.

And yet I loved this city to bits. Vehemently. The thought of leaving was agonising. 

‘Why do you even want to stay when this place is not serving you?’ a friend asked me.

‘Maybe you’re not meant to be here, maybe something better is coming,’ said another.

I was told well-intentioned things like this all the time as I resisted the prospect of leaving. How could I even begin to explain that it was as simple as wanting to walk up and down the streets? Not any street, but Edinburgh streets, and the closes, because they had become the rugged topography of my newfound agency. How could I explain that it was as simple as loving the old, gothic buildings and the sound of bagpipes sneaking up on me from around the tourist-heavy corner?

I didn’t just fall in love with the fantasy of this city, I loved it to its bones and grimy underbelly (yes, the Fringe venue too). Sometimes I close my eyes, and I can see it all so clearly. Vivid little snapshots, as though I never left. Usually, it is a flash of the road starting outside Waverly mall, sloping down to meet the small intersection on Market Street before opening into Cockburn Street and curving upwards. I don’t know why this is the chosen snapshot. But then I open my eyes again, and it is like I was never even there. Like a faint afterimage from another time and consciousness.

I am now in the Netherlands, trapped once again inside a visa deadline which is fast approaching. The city planning here is even more impressive. It is brighter, nicer, and the Dutch surely love their flowers. Perhaps I learned to contain my attachments. Or it is just a natural consequence of growing older. But I don’t feel the same magic. I like Holland but the experience has been somewhat flat (no pun intended). Could it be that I am more well-adjusted now? Or too numb?

But how nice it is to be here! The clean air and the easy, walkable roads. This permission to exist so naturally and freely in public space, something I cannot quite experience in Bangalore. At least not without effort and privilege. Sometimes, it really is as simple as wanting to hold onto the material comfort of a place. Don’t fault a migrant for their superficial goals, I guess.

I miss Edinburgh Old Town and Holyrood Park. 

I miss the agency that warmed my legs as I walked back to my flat, late, on a cold winter night.

I miss the person that I used to be walking up and down those hilly streets.

It was a place where I felt like myself.

It was home. 

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Many feminisms, South Korea

[번역본] A Quiet Embrace (조용한 품)

!Epic Tomorrows

By PAK Jong Hee

A temporary but urgent call to action! Centre of the Web partner Versy Talks is kindly running a free public online debate about the publishing industry from 21st to 31st May 2026. It does not take long to take part in the debate and state your opinion, and everyone is welcome! Sharing your voice will help boost both COTW and Versy Talks. Please help us grow, so that we can platform diverse and underrepresented voices from around the world. More information can be found here.

Inside the fresh green leaves, the ingredients sit quietly, curled up. The pumpkin leaves and cabbage, steamed until tender in a boiling pot, hold their contents firmly, their cheeks slightly bulging. From the outside, there is no way to know exactly what lies within those leaves, but there is a heavy certainty that they have willingly accepted everything. Not a single grain of white rice spills out; everything keeps its place in silence, leaning kindly against one another.

Wrapping a ssam (leaf wrap) is a more delicate ritual than one might think. Depending on which leaf one spreads on the palm and what is placed upon it, the weight and flavor of that single bite change entirely. When the depth of flavor is added by mixing salty soybean paste with spicy chili paste and topping it with a thin slice of garlic, the disparate, unfamiliar ingredients finally find their place, creating an exquisite harmony. Things that might taste coarse or plain when chewed separately come together to fill each other’s voids, highlighting one another’s strengths to craft a new flavor. In this way, a ssam rounds off the jagged edges of each ingredient, tucking them inside to form a solid, whole shape on the outside.

Gimbap is no different. The black dried seaweed (gim) embraces the inner ingredients tightly, never revealing them until the very end. The sharp sourness of the pickled radish, the subtle earthiness of spinach, and even the awkward flavors of leftover side dishes from a holiday—the seaweed silently enfolds them all. It does not question what has entered its embrace; it simply maintains a calm, neat cylindrical form.

My mother made gimbap as if it were her destiny. Whenever there were leftovers from the feast-like meals she prepared for holidays or birthdays, her final grand meal was always gimbap. While the outward appearance was the same every time, the inner ingredients changed with the seasons and occasions. After the holidays, it was filled with leftover japchae and pan-fried delicacies; on birthdays, it held beef and thick egg rolls; on other days, it was packed with various wild greens like water dropwort and thistle.

Before rolling the gimbap, Mother would always crisp the seaweed once more over the frying pan. That meticulous touch, meant to erase any trace of the seaweed’s characteristic fishy scent so her children would not notice, was a silent sincerity—a love that filled the space from invisible places.

My mother’s gimbap was not only special to our family. During my school days, on picnic days, my lunchbox was undoubtedly the most popular among my friends. In front of the gimbap my mother had rolled so skillfully and heartily, my friends would push aside their own lunchboxes. They would huddle around and reach their chopsticks busily toward my container, often leaving me staring at an empty box after having eaten only a few pieces myself. Yet, as I watched my friends marvel and devour it in the blink of an eye, I felt a sense of pride rather than disappointment, even in my young heart.

Inside that delicious gimbap that captured my friends’ palates were actually ingredients with very strong personalities. There were shredded red carrots with a deep earthy scent, and water dropwort with a piercing aroma. Having a weak stomach and a sensitive sense of smell since childhood, I could usually hardly eat foods with strong scents. I would not even point my chopsticks at carrots, water dropwort, or fishy anchovies. Curiously, however, those finicky ingredients became gentle once they entered the gimbap.

Those intense aromas, which usually stood out, never felt out of place. This was because the savory sesame oil seeped between the rice grains and ingredients, breaking down the boundaries of flavor, while the soft, thick egg strips kindly embraced the tough scents of the other ingredients. The process where clashing smells and strong tastes met the gentle mediators of sesame oil and eggs to become rounded and blended—it was a perfect reflection of my mother’s arduous life, raising six siblings who were all so very different.

Though we were born from the same womb, our colors and temperaments were remarkably distinct. My eldest brother, the firstborn, matured early and heavily, weighed down by the responsibility of looking after his younger siblings. Like the thick egg roll that holds the center of the gimbap steady, he silently endured his own weight and served as a reliable shield for us. On the other hand, the youngest was as fresh and free-spirited as water dropwort, tending to go in any direction. The youngest’s stubbornness in seeking freedom and the bickering voices of us siblings in between expanded precariously, like the inside of a thick, uncut roll of gimbap.

In the midst of that fierce difference, to ensure her children did not scar one another, Mother had to become the black seaweed, giving her entire body to hold us together. Just as she applied savory sesame oil to prevent the stubborn carrots and unruly water dropwort from clashing, Mother moved busily between this child and that, becoming a smooth lubricant. She trimmed our coarse hearts with warm, coaxing words and, like sticky grains of rice, patiently glued our jagged edges together.

Always anxious that one of us might go astray or be isolated and hurt among the siblings, she nurtured us with constant care. Even in the exhaustion of feeding and clothing six mouths until her hands and feet were blistered, she never treated a single child with neglect, pulling us all equally into the wide folds of her skirt. The reason that a thick, heavy roll of gimbap—our six siblings—could maintain the shape of a complete family without bursting or scattering was entirely thanks to my mother’s tough and devoted embrace, which endured all the tension and weight from the outside.

Ssam and gimbap do not boastfully reveal their contents. Even if one does not say what is inside, the moment you take a large bite, all the sincerity and harmony layered within are fully conveyed to the tip of the tongue. My mother’s heart is the same. Even without loudly proclaiming her love, and even without trying to show her bent back and calloused hands, I now know that the warmth she created by looking after and comforting us from within has already become the most solid foundation of our lives.

The quiet embrace of ssam and gimbap, which rounded and enveloped so many differences and jagged parts… Thanks to that abundance, we were able to grow up taking sweet, thoughtless bites of something as savory as sesame oil and as soft as eggs, without directly facing the bitter and harsh tastes of the world. Today, I find myself missing my mother’s firm yet warm touch that was pressed into each of those bites, and I find myself sighing with a lump in my throat. And I, too, wish to quietly unfold a wide leaf and offer this touching, tender comfort to someone else who is weary of the world.

COTW journey & strategy

Versy Talks—Centre of the Web sponsored debate: Did the internet really democratize publishing?

!Epic Tomorrows

Introduction

Centre of the Web (COTW), a new alternative online literary platform, is thrilled to announce a booster event in collaboration with Versy Talks, a complete online debating platform, with community participation, professional debate coaching and tons of debate drills. 

This debate is titled Did the internet really democratize publishing? It started on 21st May and will finish on 31st May, and Versy is generously sponsoring the debate, offering a $25 prize, divided between 5 debaters with the most votes on their arguments. You can take part for free. 

COTW enthusiastically encourages all its contributing writers, subscribers and readers to take part in the debate during the debate period. This will help with COTW`s mission to contribute to a global revitalization of human literature during this crisis-ridden but epic period of human history, encouraging diverse and underrepresented voices from around the world to share their thoughts and stories all in one place, on a dynamic and globally interconnected platform. This aligns with the purpose of Versy Talks to promote structured debates and insightful discussions, where debaters can explore their commonalities and points of difference, to contribute to a more harmonious online culture.

More on the debate

It has been argued that the internet has democratized publishing so that these days, almost anyone in the world has the opportunity to get heard and read. However, inequalities remain, including who really makes it as a writer, who is widely read, and who is really likely to be picked up by the big publishers. In the sponsored Versy debate we ask: Did the internet really democratize publishing?! We invite debaters to consider how far the internet-led democratization of publishing is an illusion, and how far the same old inequalities that existed in the traditional print publishing of the 20th Century, still exist now. Also, how much is the best or most interesting writing published, compared with what sells, and do authors who are already well-connected still have a massive advantage, as well as those who have internet publishing skills? (Not everyone understands how to manage a blog, for example). All printed media and publishing should be considered within this debate, from newspapers, through blogs, to e-books and physical books and everything else.

COTW call for submissions

COTW would also like to announce that they are actively looking for written contributions from around the world. We currently only publish in English, but eventually we intend to publish in several languages. Contributors are welcome to submit writing in their native language, where we can negotiate translation using AI tools. This is not yet a paying market, but it is a chance for you to get your voice heard, and to receive free editing advice. The bigger you can help COTW grow, the quicker we can get to the point where we can start paying contributors! Flash fiction is encouraged, as are diary pieces, giving insights into the daily lives of diverse human beings, especially (but not necessarily) those living in difficult conditions or going through interesting times. Other types of creative writing are also encouraged, but please note: we are not accepting poetry at this time. Short essays, articles, blog-style posts, journalistic pieces and arts reviews will also be considered. For more ideas, please browse the different post categories by navigating from the WRITING tab in the menu at the top of the COTW frontpage. All submissions should be sent to the editors at the email address: epictomorrows@gmail.com Thanks!