Theme explained:

The theme for fall 2025 PSPP is:

“Unbelievable”  

Thoughts on the theme:

Personal stories about the stories we tell ourselves—rumors, myths, and superstitions—and then question.

Well, I always thought...• Third time is the charm. • Everybody else is going. •
Fingers crossed on Friday the 13th. • It’s God’s will. •
Well, I heard —and I’m pretty sure it’s true… •  Father knows best. •
They lived happily ever after. • I’ve got on my lucky shirt and hat. •
Yeah, I’m smart enough. • That’ll never happen.

 
The truth of a matter is one thing. What we believe to be true is perhaps more important, certainly it is as it affects us and what we do in our own lives. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves come from somewhere and then we tend to repeat them until we start to believe them without remembering or considering the source—a parent, a friend, a babysitter, a preacher, a teacher, a book, a movie, any modern media, or the universe of “I’ve-always-heard” ideas. And then we get busy living.

What we believe is just that, it’s what we believe. It’s our actions taken on those beliefs that have consequences—for better and for worse—to keep us safe or put us in peril. We don’t make it all up as we go along in life. We all have stories looping in the backs of our minds that tell us what’s what and how to behave. But the world changes and we change. Sometimes what we believe still works and sometimes it doesn’t. And that’s why you have a story to tell.

Tell us yours. 

The stories we want are about you and the times you acted on your beliefs that you maybe later came to question or confirm. Were you imprinted from circulating rumors, gossip and hearsay, perhaps from a scolding or loving parent/caregiver, or from widely held notions accepted more-or-less unquestioned as explanatory tales for the way things are, or from an unjustifiable reliance on a supernatural explanation for causes of outcomes we all experience. How did that belief guide you in life or in an particular instance? What did you learn or confirm, and how did you change, if you did? What did you decide to believe and why?

Share your story in 750-800 words

April 15 - Important Useful Clarification - Please read

The PSPP is about writing—writing stories of personal experience and change, with a lesson learned, usually, from the life of the writer (or the main character, if an ancestor or family member). It is a story with an arc of situation and circumstance, an intervention or incident, a decision, an outcome, and a reflection. That writing skill and the craft of storytelling is what we hope to encourage and help develop through our Call for Personal Stories.  

Our 13th Call on the theme “Unbelievable” is no different. We are seeking stories about personal transition and transformation from a change in beliefs, perhaps new beliefs after an event or incident, or an experience because of a change in beliefs. That is one simple way to think of it. As in all our stories across 12 collections so far, we are wanting the writer to share about the main character’s journey through the experience.  

For the 13th Call, we have suggested that some personal beliefs can come from rumors, myths, and superstitions, just as examples. Propaganda and dogma are other sources, but people get too married to those, so we are not seeking stories about politics and religion. Rumors, myths, and superstitions are more generally recognized as such by “society,” a culture-at-large, which can vary by a host of parameters including generation, country, language, ethnicity, etc. So, we suggest those three categories—rumors, myths, and superstitions—as starting points for thinking of a belief you might have had at one time and learned through experience, perhaps, that it was not true for you, either at a point in time or thereafter. We all change. This is your opportunity to share a story about changes in what you once believed and why. How did you come to hold that belief? What happened to create it? What happened to change it? What or who was persuasive? What changed in you such that what you once believed became “Unbelievable”? Or what happened to make what was “unbelievable” into your accepted reality? 

If you are writing a story about some exceptional experience or occurrence that you think will make readers shout, “That’s unbelievable,” you are probably on the wrong track for the stories we are seeking, the stories we will consider, the stories we will publish.

The stories we want are from the lives of the writers (or those people they are writing about). We want to know about their experiences and changes. Those are the stories that will help develop better writing skills and also be worth the time of readers.  

Good luck to us all.

Here are some thoughts that might spark your own discovery of ideas. These are not prescriptive, not intended to circumscribe the notion of what you might write. Have fun with it.

“Hey, Fatty. Yeah, you.”

Pretty is as pretty does.

Children are to be seen and not heard.

Fingers crossed on Friday the 13th.

Well, I always thought…

Gotta be true. I saw it on TV.

“You know, you can’t get pregnant on a Friday.”

I don’t think you are college material.

I always heard…

Everybody says…

Third time is the charm.

That wouldn’t be a problem if you knew what you were doing.

If you break a mirror, it’s seven years of bad luck.

Never walk under a ladder.

If I give in, they’ll like me.

“All the other kids are going.”

“You is smart. You is kind. You is important.”

“Something old, something new; something borrowed, something blue.”

“The face that launched a thousand ships.”

Well, I always thought...

Third time is the charm.

Everybody else is going.

Father knows best.

It’s God’s will.

He would never do that to me.

Well, I heard —and I’m pretty sure it’s true…  

She told me so, yes.

They lived happily ever after.

I’ve got on my lucky shirt and hat.

Yeah, I’m smart enough.

That’ll never happen.

We are often asked what our theme is “about.” We happily reply that we will know when our writers tell us. And, so now it is your turn. Tell us your story of “Unbelievable.” Then we’ll all learn together what it means.

Be safe. Spread kindness. Keep writing.

Write your story. Surprise us. Surprise yourself.