Announcement: Tap on the Glass Writing Contest

We are launching our new digital journal, TAP ON THE GLASS, with an ESSAY CONTEST. 

This is the first in a series of writing competitions. Throughout the summer, we will hold several competitions welcoming writing across a variety of formats. Essays, poems, and short fiction–each will add a new branch to our journal. Come autumn time, pieces from each branch will form the matter of our first print edition.

During this particular contest, we’re looking for essays responding to the ideas of STEWARDSHIP & SOVEREIGNTY. 

In this increasingly globalised world, how does one enact stewardship to address our responsibility to the planet and all living beings that call it home? How can we reframe our dependence on ecosystems and animals as mere resources, and how can that impact our practice of stewardship? What does this practice look like? What are the implications of these practices on our collective sovereignty? (Sovereignty being ––––) How might our stewardship and sovereignty face threats from cruel and oppressive policies and structures? How might it provide answers for the biodiversity crisis and remove the disconnect in rooms of power? These are the branching questions we’d like you to explore further. Please interpret them freely. We can’t wait to hear what you have to say!

Contest Details:

• Entry: Free, open to all

• Deadline: June 1st at 5 pm BST

• Prize: 1st $50, 2nd $35, 3rd $25 - Top 10 submissions will be included in the digital issue. The top 5 submissions will be included in the printed physical copy of Tap on the Glass Issue 1 in September 2026. 

• Word limit: 1200 words

To submit, please fill out this form before the deadline. You can fill out the form below or click on this web link: https://tally.so/r/XxRL9O

If you have any concerns or inquiries, please email tapontheglass@wildwestand.com

We’re eager to hear from you and see how you start tapping on that glass!

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About TAP ON THE GLASS… 

You’re at the zoo.

The sign next to the sleeping lemur bears a warning: ‘Do NOT tap on the glass’.

And maybe, like us, you hear a hollow sound in the words. The hidden truth behind this commonly doled-out command. A command that says, "Keep your distance. Do not engage. Remain detached. Because if you tap on the glass, you just might shatter the illusion. 'An illusion that says this strange sense of sterility hides nothing uncomfortable. And yet it calls to mind old, insidious practices.... the looker and the looked-at, the subject and the object, the coloniser and the colonised. Don't tap on the Glass because this separation and hierarchy is the best way forward. 

This command has been forced onto people around the world in different forms, given to them in all kinds of ways, and it sells detachment as a normalised way of being. That detachment pulls us away from our connection to the planet and all living things that call her home. It teaches us to detach from our connection to our lands, so it’s that much easier to sell them off to private companies to advance the extractive capitalist goal. Under this framework, detachment doesn't always represent respect for the animal. It's only really representative of a passive acceptance of what we've inflicted,  a sad withdrawal from the living beings and ecosystems we might have learned from, found joy with, or understood for their distinct places in our world. 

In a time when it seems we’re facing crisis after crisis, we have to build a contingency plan for the future. To do this, we have to repair our relationships with nonhumans and our extractive mindset toward Earth’s vast and diverse ecosystems. Now is the time to tap on that glass, shatter the illusions complicity and neoliberalism have fed us, and address the sellers of this illusion, their justifications, and the impact this has on conservation and culture. We urge you to get close. DO engage with the animals, people, and places and awaken your ache for connection.