Remember the Skin Project in which writer Shelley Jackson asked volunteers to each have one word of a short story tattooed onto their bodies? Perhaps the participants in that project will have another shot at literary/tattoo fame.

A call for submissions of literary tattoos has been all over the book blogosphere of late, most recently on The Millions (those of you who follow the link, note the montage of Where the Wild Things Are tattoos). Authors Justin Taylor and Eva Talmadge are seeking to compile the images into the book, complete with name and location of the bearer of each tattoo, as well as a sentence or two describing the significance of the ink.

The call for entries reminded me of the University of Nebraska Press’s own tattoo book: The Blue Tattoo by Margot Mifflin. The Blue Tattoo is a biography of Olive Oatman, a girl who was kidnapped by Yavapai Indians as she and her family were traveling the Mormon Trail. She was eventually traded to a group of Mohave Indians, who tattooed her chin and raised her as her own. When she was 18, she was reunited with her family, but the tattoo on her chin served as a constant reminder of her captive life. Margot Mifflin is also the author of another tattoo book, Bodies of Subversion, about the history of women and tattoos.