Category: Call Type

Taking Submissions: Roses & Wildflowers Autumn 2025 Issue

Submission Window: March 1st – July 15th, 2025
Payment: Short Stories: $20, Poetry: $10
Theme: An issue dedicated to hope. Solar-punk, hope-punk, envisioning a better future. Fantasy that explores hope and grace.

Spring 2025 Call for Submissions: MYTHO-ANARCHISM

An issue dedicated to hope. Solar-punkhope-punk, envisioning a better future. Fantasy that explores hope and grace.

(more…)

Taking Submissions: Something Out There

Deadline: April 30th, 2025
Payment: $25 and a contributor’s copy
Theme: Stories taking place in a specific area based around a UFO festival

Welcome to Bellflower, a sleepy (fictional) Nevada town where nothing much happens. Well, except for the influx of tourists asking about Area 51, which lies to the southwest, and the annual UFO festival, which happens every August. For years, man watched the skies. In Bellflower…the skies watched back.

We’re looking for submissions that take place during or around this festival, a town-wide event where locals dress up, set up telescopes, take tourists on shady desert tours, and stay up all hours of the night, hoping for a glimpse of something from the great beyond.

(more…)

Taking Submissions: Consumed

Deadline: April 30th, 2025
Payment: 1500-4000=$10, 4001-75000=$20
Theme: Horror that involves food

Arbutus Studios is planning our first prose horror anthology, “Consumed” for publication in 2025.

The anthology’s title alludes to a central theme of food and eating. Itching to tell a twisted cannibal tale? Have a unique take on zombies? Cursed birthday cakes? All the above are in line with what we’re looking for.

What we want

For this anthology, Arbutus Studios seeks original horror stories that fit snugly within the imagery, concept, and theme of food.

Tales submitted to Consumed can encompass more than one horror subgenre or blend other speculative genres into the narrative. We want to read stories we can’t put down, and thoughtful tales that linger with you long after the final page.

Original, compelling stories will grab our attention. Retreads of familiar horror clichés will be privately mocked, and the tales sent straight to hell. We want to see interesting characters, unique worlds, and unsettling atmosphere. Surprise us. Scare us. Tickle our imagination.

Arbutus Studios will automatically reject stories with extreme gore or stories that glorify sexual violence, child abuse, cruelty to animals, body-shaming, or other deviant behaviour.

(more…)

Taking Submissions: Enter Here

Submission Window: Marginalized writers from June 1, 2025 to June 15, 2025 and for BIPOC writers from June 1, 2025 to June 22, 2025.
Payment: $0.01 USD per word
Theme: Speculative fiction from marginalized voices that include a door opening (literally or metaphorically) in some manner.

GENRE: Speculative Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror

TITLE: Enter Here: An Anthology of Portals

For untold years, the door has been closed. But today, the key turns. The lock clicks. The door opens, and you go through it.

What awaits you on the other side?

ENTER HERE is an anthology of thirteen short stories of speculative fiction from marginalized voices. Breaking into publishing can feel like knocking on a closed door or being turned away from a locked gate. With this anthology, we want to open the doors.

Stories in this collection may fall into any genre of speculative fiction and will span the range from cozy to grimdark, but every piece must include a door opening in some manner. Physical or metaphorical, traditional or unusual—make the doors your own. Send us your lushly written, genre-blending stories that look at portals in unexpected or unusual ways.

(more…)

Taking Submissions: Monstrous Angels

Submission Window: February 23rd to May 23rd, 2025
Payment: $20
Theme: Answering the question – why are angels so compelling as anti-heroes and/or villains?

Monstrous Angels is an anthology that will explore one of the most enduring questions of religious horror–why are angels so compelling as anti-heroes and/or villains? We’ve seen it time and time again: Angelfall, Constantine, Legion, Angelology, the list goes on. We love our dark angels.

We want stories of the morally gray. Of angels and humans trying their best and failing. We want to explore all corners of this topic so feel free to be broad. Angel-like beings from other cultures are welcomed and encouraged. Our definition of angel is loose. We want winged divine creatures trying to navigate moral quandaries, being consumed by righteous anger, and experiencing the consequences of being too close to humans. 

Give us your nasty angels. Your conflicted angels. We want dark, complicated stories.

(more…)

Taking Submissions: manywor(l)ds March/April 2025 Window

Submission Window: March 1st – April 30th, 2025
Payment: $10
Theme: Stories of any genre by writers who identify with and as any of the following descriptors: trans, two-spirit, disabled, neurodivergent, Mad, queer, crip, nonbinary, genderqueer, intersex.

We welcome submissions by those who identify with and as any of the following descriptors: trans, two-spirit, disabled, neurodivergent, Mad, queer, crip, nonbinary, genderqueer, intersex. This is a space for the words, works, and worlds of and by those whose bodyminds defy social expectations and invite new ways of thinking and knowing.

We do not need to know the specifics of your identity/diagnosis/experience unless you want us to. We invite closeted and questioning people to share their work, as well as those whose experiences fall outside the confines of the language we used above.

We welcome submissions from creators of all ages. We particularly encourage unpublished/emerging/young creators to submit. If you know an incarcerated/institutionalized creator who would like to submit, email us for information as to where to mail the submission, or clearly indicate in your message that you are submitting on their behalf.

We publish on a quarterly schedule, with issues coming out on:

  • February 15
  • May 15
  • August 15
  • November 15

We are open for all submissions EXCEPT during publication months. That is to say, we are open for submissions January, March, April, June, July, September, October, and December.

(more…)

Taking Submissions: It Was Paradise

Deadline: June 22nd, 2025
Payment: 15 cents per word for fiction and $75 per page for poetry and artwork.
Theme: In a world devastated by catastrophes, we need stories that confront these horrors.
Note: Prioritizing work by people with lived experience of war and conflict.

It’s time to announce the call for submissions to It Was Paradise*, a special issue of Reckoning edited by Sonia Sulaiman and with cover art by Moníca Robles Corzo. In a world devastated by catastrophes, we need stories that confront these horrors. This is all out war on the planet, on life itself. War and conflict are the themes for this volume of Reckoning. Probe into the heart of extinction, genocide, and climate crisis. Expose the exploitation of the earth. Show us how the world could be on the other side. Send us your stories of environmental justice, of violence, imperialism, fascism, and resistance, of destruction, survival, and of triumph.

It Was Paradise is open for submissions now through the summer solstice, June 22, 2025, with tentative release scheduled for October. Payment rate will be 15 cents (US) per word for prose, $75 per page for poetry and art. As always, we’re seeking submissions from Black, Brown, Indigenous, queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent, imprisoned, impoverished, and otherwise marginalized human beings from everywhere, but in particular for this issue, we will be prioritizing work by people with lived experience of war and conflict. We’ll continue to accept submissions to our communication-themed regular issue, Reckoning X, throughout. Also, during this submission window only, we’re relaxing our usual rule about multiple submissions to allow folks to submit to both calls simultaneously.
(more…)