The Monstrous & The Divine: First Week Observations

Welcome to The Divine Blog!

It’s officially been one full week since we opened our submissions for the upcoming sapphic anthology, The Monstrous and the Divine. After the spectacular response received for Who Am I? we were prepared for a phenomenal response in this first week of submissions being open once again. And we were not disappointed! We would like to thank everyone who has already sent in a submission for our call. In our first week, we received and read through 22 submissions.

Unfortunately, enough of those submissions were set in classical times—or otherwise did not fit the guidelines—to prompt us into making a social media post as early as Monday this week.

Around the same time, we noted a trend where approximately 2/3 of our submissions saw either the main character or love interest dead before the end of the story.

Though we are certainly open to tragic narratives in Scylla anthologies, it’s fair to say that in 2026 we’re hoping to see more sapphics surviving and thriving past the end of the story than we’ve seen this first week. Tragedy is thrilling, but so is tragedy that doesn’t end in death!

After our social media posts and this blog post, we’re hopeful of seeing fewer dead sapphic characters in the weeks to come.

Submission Demographics

Otherwise, we’re happy to already report an abundance of variety in the submissions received! Mythologies from Egypt, Scotland, Haiti and East Asia – just to name a few – have seen themselves reimagined in our inbox, in addition to the expected and well-known stories of Greek mythology.

We’re excited as well to see that our submission call has already reached people from a wide variety of countries, such as Poland, Australia and New Zealand in addition, of course, to the USA.

Manuscript Wishlist

Though I lament not to have yet received any submissions relating to the Manuscript Wishlist first sent out in the Scylla Newsletter, then shared on BlueSky, I will admit to the utter feet-kicking excitement I felt at receiving a submission featuring a gumiho within the first couple of days!

If you’re interested in reading more information on Scylla slush and what the editors here might be looking for, please take a look at Ella’s reflections on the story submissions from Scylla’s first anthology call, Who Am I?