We are so excited to share the collaboration that is the result of the 2026 “Switcheroo.” We asked writers to respond to Word-works 1868-2022 by artist Daniel Esquivia Zapata’s. Beautiful work poured in, work we were honored to consider. In the end, Catherine Wing’s poem, boldly titled “Amendment 14,” thrilled us with its direct, evocotive, querying approach. As Catherine Wing writes, “From a distance an opening, a packet of waves, a possibility.” Is that our country, our moment? Read and consider.
In all the tumult of this world at this moment, we invite you to this coming together of art and literature, words and images, this hopeful, necessary thing. Six original collaborations between strangers. Six moments to contemplate what images say, what words show, and what, together, they combine to create.
In the “Collaborators’ Q&A” that accompanies each broadside, we ask artists and writers about their creative process, whether they have a generative prompt they’d like to share, what their partner’s work reveals to them in their own, and what comes to mind when they consider all of the broadsides of the folio together. Of the last, Rose Strode says:
I find myself thinking about how artists navigate between personal narrative and broader interpretation. There’s a clear connection between lived experience and visual expression, and it makes me wonder how meaning shifts depending on medium, style, or context. I’m also curious about how process and revision shape what we ultimately understand as “finished” work.
We wonder the same… and we hope you’ll find your own questions and connections. As always, you can download the letter-sized PDFs, free. And we hope you will! Print them out (pro tip: public libraries are often a wonderful, cheap place to print in color), and put them up in your community. Think of this as leaving a little love note to your neighbors or offering a sign of life from your interior world, which is too often “screened” by social conventions and, well, screens.
What role does AI play in your creative life? Your pragmatic life? How do you, as a human, reckon fully with its presence personally? Ecologically? Ethically? This folio offers more than we ever hoped as we reckon with humanity and inhumanity around us. Please enjoy (read, dwell, print, share) these five original collaborations focusing on “Signs of Life: Artists and Writers Respond to AI”.
BROADSIDED’S ANNUAL SWITCHEROO WANTED: Ekphrastic Responses to artist Daniel Esquivia Zapata’s art DEADLINE: May 30, 2026 SUBMITTABLE LINK (use “Switcheroo” tab) Broadsided seeks submissions of poetry and short prose that respond to this art, “Word-works 1868-2022” by Daniel Esquivia Zapata.…
In all the tumult of this world at this moment, we invite you to this coming together of art and literature, words and images, this hopeful, necessary thing. Six original collaborations between strangers. Six moments to contemplate what images say,…
Welcome, all. We are grateful to share an abundance of work in this folio of eleven collaborations. Each original, each accompanied by thoughtful conversations about process, response, and the creative life of the writer and artist. This is our annual…
