Ninth Letter, a literary journal affiliated with the University of Illinois, seeks fiction for its print edition. The theme for this issue is 'performance,' interpreted broadly: the ways in which we construct and present selves for audiences both real and imagined. The journal invites writers to explore the theatricality of daily life, the artifice of social media, and the roles we inhabit—gender, relationships, dress, and feeling among them. The selected work will appear in the print edition, reaching a readership that values literary fiction and innovative writing. While no monetary prize is offered, publication in Ninth Letter carries weight in the literary community, and contributors join a lineage of writers whose work has been featured in the journal. The curatorial vision for this issue centers on work that interrogates the boundary between authenticity and performance, that considers the 'low hum of wishful artifice' in contemporary life. The editors are likely to favor stories that are formally inventive and thematically resonant, that treat performance not merely as metaphor but as a lived condition.