Welcome to Mina’s is a Slice of Life shared universe anthology. It is centered around a fictional diner started in Vancouver, located in the Downtown Eastside. In 1919, B.C. introduced legislation that forbade white waitresses to work for Chinese business owners for their own “protection.” Without a job and a child to feed, Elizabeth Lakely decides to work for her sister, Laura. The restaurant, Mina’s, is named after Elizabeth’s daughter.
The stories for Mina’s are within the same restaurant over the years, and while the characters of the first story are available for use, they are not mandatory. The restaurant in people’s submissions can have changed hands throughout the years from 1919 to present day.
Stories for Welcome to Mina’s can be about regular customers and employees at the restaurant, concern over the restaurant’s future with competing restaurants or increasing building development in the area. Customer conversations and interactions, the restaurant gets a bad or good review, a menu or managerial change, even tourists visiting Vancouver for the first time. Negative events are also acceptable, such as a robbery or an argument between characters. Stories should have elements of Vancouver life, culture and or history. There are many possibilities, but all stories must take place within the diner or just outside of it.
The deadline for submissions is January 1st, 2020
What we want
- An elevator pitch, single sentence that sums up your story
- A script or thumbnails with legible writing, showing pages count and panel breakdown
- Name, phone number, email, and a few sentences about yourself and any previous work
- Artists – 4-5 samples of sequential art. You can submit a link to a website.
- Target age range is 18+. That does not mean stories have to be mature, just that the target audience is generally older readers.
What we don’t want
- Pin ups or posters. Please just submit sequential works
- Romance is fine, sexual content is not
- Mild violence in the right context (see above suggestions), extreme violence is not permitted
Contributors must be 18+ and at least one member of all creative teams must be a British Columbian, either by birth or residence. If you are looking to work as a team, the team must be assembled before applying. The anthology will pay $75/page to be divided equally among the particular story’s contributors. Stories will be black and white/greyscale with a minimum of 2 pages long to 12 pages. Contributors will be expected to communicate with the editors in order to properly fit their stories into the Mina’s universe. Final page dimensions are 7.25” x 11”. A print ready template is available in both PDF and PSD below as well as a pdf of the first story for the anthology to help get started.
Welcome to Mina’s first story
Submission materials
Submissions and questions send to minasanthology@gmail.com
