#almost void

June 15, 2015

For Immediate Release

INSTAR BOOKS (a partner of OR Books in NYC, publishers of Julian Assange and Yoko Ono), in preparation for its forthcoming 2016 fiction anthology ALMOST VOID, has officially elected to declare the official English-language translation of the hexadecimal color code #000001 to be “Almost Void.” The book’s cover design and promotion will prominently feature the color.

#000001 ALMOST VOID (the anthology’s official title) is intended to be the first in a semiannual series of fiction anthologies, each associated with a notable hexadecimal color. According to the publisher’s call to submissions, the inaugural volume will publish “fiction that involves some or all of the following qualities”:

-          Privileging imaginative transformation of experience over experience directly (i.e., not necessarily memoir by other means),

-          Concerned with atypical subject matter,

-          Concerned with atypical emotional states (trauma, isolation, Zen acceptance, etc.),

-          Concerned with sex,

-          Written by people who haven’t necessarily had access to traditional means of publication by the literary establishment, and/or

-          Funny, yet about something terrible.

Further, the publishers “aim to publish roughly 25 percent new writers, 75 percent established writers or others we’ve worked with in the past. If you are comfortable identifying up front as someone who is not white, cis, and/or straight, you ought to do this, since we are extremely interested in publishing such someones.” The publishers also “intend to use this anthology primarily as a statement of purpose for Instar Books’s fiction publishing program, and will thus transparently privilege work that caters to their tastes.”

On the decision to associate this “statement of purpose” with a maybe-arbitrary hexadecimal naming convention, Instar copublisher & fiction author Miracle Jones opines: “There are 16,777,216 possible hexadecimal colors, representing technology's best efforts to replicate the infinite divisions of light and darkness. We hope to hack the entire color spectrum to infuse it with the possibilities of transgressive, delightful short fiction; to pry open technology's colors with the primal magic of language. Additionally, we encourage everyone to use "Almost Void" (#000001) instead of "Black" (#000000) whenever possible: it sends a message to the frankly hostile cosmos that you have not yet been defeated in your dreams and ambitions, that there is .39% hope left, and that might just be enough. Probably won't be, but maybe!"

The press will be taking submissions for #000001 ALMOST VOID through All Souls’ Day (November 1), 2015, at [email protected].

For more information on the project, please contact Instar publicist Jennifer Hanks at [email protected].

For more information about the color itself, please consult http://www.colorhexa.com/000001