The Open Sores Project exists to encourage vulnerability, validate individuals living with trauma and/or disabilities, raise awareness, and serve as an intentional attempt to get the public interested in the arts again.

We seek work that focuses on quiet recoveries/declines as opposed to shocking spectacles—literature that challenges perspectives and promotes awareness and reflection.

Through vulnerability and emotional honesty, this project seeks to highlight humanity’s interconnectedness.

We are not interested in the shock of a stab. We are interested in the infection and/or healing that follows.

Publishers too often seek clean narratives, redemptive stories with emotional endings, and unrealistic expectations that do not reflect reality. By focusing solely on "hope and recovery," many publications inadvertently impose a required narrative arc that ignores the complex, non-linear, and often "ugly" reality of living with trauma or chronic conditions. These manufactured structures ultimately commercialize individuals for profit.

Life rarely follows a tidy redemption arc. By welcoming "ugly declines/consequences," we are promoting a radical form of authenticity. This will attract the most honest, resonant work that often gets rejected by editors looking for a clear "lesson learned."

The act of externalizing, describing, and shaping the "ugliness" into art (rather than shaping it toward a required happy ending) is often the most powerful stage of processing. We are creating a space for unfiltered self-discovery. We are looking at the whole, messy process, not just the sanitized conclusion.