Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press

Friends,

Thanks for getting this far!  To know if your work fits with moral injury as our theme, you need to know--if you don't already--what we mean by moral injury.  It's important to us because we get a good amount of submitted work that does not fit our theme. 

First, the experience of trauma, no matter how severe, does not necessarily (or even usually) lead to moral injury to the victim.

Moral injury occurs in two categories of circumstances. 

In the first, an individual engages in an act that is a transgression of that person’s own moral code and which has serious, even grave consequences. Or, the individual fails to do something when their moral code demanded they act with, again, serious consequences.  

In the second category, a person is morally injured by seeing others engage in bad, abusive, immoral behavior (with serious consequences). For example, combat military may have seen their colleagues or their superiors do egregious things.

In any case, moral injury occurs when the trauma causes a loss of faith or trust, or even hostility, toward authority, institutions, and even one’s perception of human morality. It has psychological, social,  and spiritual aspects.

The field of moral injury has been applied to combat veterans. Consider a Vietnam veteran who kills a noncombatant. Or who sees his or her own military leaders engage in incompetent, careless, reckless behavior that got people hurt or killed. That doesn’t just cause PTSD. It is an assault on the person’s moral faculties. 

Or consider a police officer whose line of work exposes him regularly to the worst kinds of conduct in human beings.

Another: Someone works for a government child protection office. They also see very bad human behavior, victimization of children, but also work in a system that doesn’t necessarily take good care of children and families.

Another: A driver engages in behavior in their car that distracts them and they cause an accident in which an innocent person is severely injured or killed. Subsequently, the driver realizes they had a moral duty to be attentive when driving and due to their negligence, terrible harm is done.

Please consider that, in this context, the experience of a broken relationship, or other kinds of personal losses, however painful, are not about moral injury.

We have no length guidelines for poems. Previously published work will be considered, as long as we can quickly resolve any permission to reprint issues.  

Questions to Dale at dalewisely@gmail.com.

Thanks for submitting!  

Dale

Friends,

Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press plans to publish a second print anthology of poems and creative nonfiction on grief. For a look at our 2025 collection, Memento: An Anthology of Poems on Grief, visit https://www.ambidextrousbloodhound.com/grief-anthology-2025. The new volume will be edited by Katherine DiBella Seluja, Ken Chau, and Dale Wisely.

This is a fundraiser for a nonprofit on whose board Dale serves: Community Grief Support. https://www.communitygriefsupport.org/

(In related news, as of August 10, 2026, Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. All net proceeds from our activities are donated to charities.)

We invite you to submit poems and creative nonfiction.

Because this is a fundraiser in which all net proceeds go to the nonprofit, we ask authors of accepted work to agree to pre-purchase a copy. 

Guidelines:

•    Poems on loss, grief, and mourning. Limit: 50 lines; we prefer 30 or fewer.  •    Any form is acceptable. We continue to have an aversion to rhyme.  •    Because we hope to reach readers who don't normally read much poetry, poems need to be more accessible than what we typically see in poetry journals. We don't want to overstate this—we still hope to see poems that require focus and thought. We just don't want readers scratching their heads and saying "huh?" too often.  •    Creative nonfiction. Yeah. We don't really know what it is either. So, let's say: first-person prose, narrative, 600 words maximum.  •    Previously published work will be considered if the author holds republication rights. We'll credit the original publisher like this: "Appeared in Right Hand Pointing, Issue 101, 2022."  •    Submit no more than 2 pieces total. •    Deadline: December 1, 2026. 11:59 PM Central

SUBMIT at https://righthandpointing.submittable.com/submit/315734/grief-anthology

Thanks, 

Dale 

Katherine 

Ken