Flint Area Writers is seeking stories and poetry about the monsters who live in Flint, Michigan.

Even before the water crisis, Flint was written off as a zombie city—too soft in the head to know it’s dead. When the auto industry fled, decades ago it left behind vacant warehouses, poisoned soil, and a jobless generation. This new century brought us the corruption that led to the water crisis. More poison spread through the pipes.

We want your stories and poetry about the monsters that these and a hundred other misfortunes have brought to our city, human or not. What lives in the abandoned houses now? Who stalks the fields of broken concrete, held in by rusted chain link fences?

Give us monsters, who rage, give us monsters who are just trying to fit in, who mourn their lives that were. Give us humans that are broken, cryptids that lurk among us, or more traditional monsters that have been here all along. We want short stories with original characters.