Category: Poetry

Anthology / Events / Flash / Poetry / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Alternative Truths, Southern Edition: Bless Their Hearts

Deadline: June 30th, 2023
Payment: 3 cents per word
Theme: A look at the south of the United States through the lens of speculative fiction

B Cubed press is proud to announce our latest Open Call:  Alternative Truths. Southern Edition: Bless their Hearts (working title).

Edited by K.G.  Anderson and Bob Brown and the next in B Cubed Press’s best-selling Alternative Truths series.

This book will examine the South, a place where politicians and their followers compete to peg the outrage meter. Why—and how—are they turning the United States into a cauldron of bigotry and hate?

  • They are banning books.
  • They are controlling free speech (“Don’t Say Gay”).
  • They have placed bounties on abortion seekers.
  • They have declared war on Mickey Mouse.
  • They promote state takeovers of local prosecutors’ offices, election boards, college governing boards, and school curricula.
  • They think no one is too young or too unbalanced to have a gun and are In full retreat on gun-safety laws.
  • They would make your gender identity a crime.

It goes on and on.

This book will look at the mindset behind these and other efforts to bring back the Old South, a mythical place and time when everyone knew their place.

We want you give us stories that speak to the consequences of such a mindset and where it may be taking us as individuals and  as a culture. What, if left unfettered, would they make of America, the world, and the future. And more important, how will we fight to stop them.

 What we are looking for:
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Anthology / Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Poetry / Pro

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Taking Submissions: Qualia Nous Volume 2

Deadline: July 31st, 2023
Payment: 10 cents per word up to 3,000 words, $500 for novelettes, $50 for short poems, $100 for longer poems
Theme: Qualia: instances of subjective, conscious experience; the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena; the way it feels to have mental states. Nous: intellections; awareness; perception; understanding; reason; thought; intuition; the faculty of the human mind; having the ability to understand what is true or real; practical intelligence.

The first volume of Qualia Nous (2014), edited by Michael Bailey, won the Benjamin Franklin Award for science fiction and was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in an Anthology. It was a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year finalist in horror, science fiction, and a bronze winner for anthologies, as well as a silver medal finalist for the Independent Publisher Book Awards, a finalist for the Indie Book Awards, and a winner of the International Book Award. It was also the first Written Backwards anthology (of eventually many) to contain work by Stephen King.

Usman T. Malik’s “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” was a finalist for the Nebula Award and tied to win the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction with Rena Mason’s “Ruminations.” And Marge Simon’s poem “Shutdown” (the only poem in the anthology) won the Rhysling Award from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association. So, a second volume of Qualia Nous was inevitable, albeit 10 years later, and will again not only feature legends of the craft but showcase today’s emerging talent.

What does the title mean? It’s up to interpretation.

Qualia: instances of subjective, conscious experience; the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena; the way it feels to have mental states.

Nous: intellections; awareness; perception; understanding; reason; thought; intuition; the faculty of the human mind; having the ability to understand what is true or real; practical intelligence.
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Magazine / Ongoing Submissions / Poetry / Semipro

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Ongoing Submissions: Star*Line

Payment: 4¢/word rounded to next dollar, minimum $4. One copy to all contributors. Non fiction that fits here of 1 cent per word
Theme: Science Fiction Poetry

Star*Line is the official print journal of the SFPA, established in 1978. It is a literary venue for speculative (including science-fiction, fantasy, and horror) poets and poetry enthusiasts, and features interviews, articles, reviews, member news and letters, association business, and poetry—by members and nonmembers.

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Anthology / Events / Flash / Poetry / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Playlist of the Damned

Submission Window: May 1st – 31st, 2023
Payment: Short Fiction: .05 per word (up to .08 if stretch goal is met) Poetry: $1 per line up to 50 lines (up to $2 if stretch goal is met)
Theme: Horror telling a tale of music

Submissions for Playlist of the Damned, the 2023 Kickstarter anthology from Weird Little Worlds Press will open on May 1st, 2023. This anthology is the third Kickstarter anthology from WLW Press, and features authors such as Gemma Files, Philip Fracassi, Lisa Morton, Eric LaRocca, Hailey Piper, Premee Mohamed, Craig L. Gidney, and more. The press will take 9 additional stories and poems from its open submissions period, with a potential to take more, depending on the Kickstarter’s funding.

Weird Little Worlds Press has become one of the strongest publishers of short horror fiction, with Humans are the Problem: A Monster’s Anthology (2021) and Mother: Tales of Love and Terror (2022) both being recognized on the Bram Stoker Award® Preliminary Ballots. Stories from the press’s anthologies have also appeared on the yearly Pseudopod fiction highlight roundup as well as Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year anthologies. The 2022 Mother is also on the final Stoker ballot for Excellence in an Anthology, and the co-editors of this year’s Playlist, Jessica Landry and Willow Dawn Becker, are both Stoker-nominated editors (Landry, There Is No Death, There Are No Dead; Crystal Lake Publishing, 2021)(Becker, Mother: Tales of Love and Terror; WLW Press, 2022).

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Artwork / Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Magazine / Non-fiction / Poetry / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Haven Speculative 2023 Limited Submissions Call #3 (Early)

Submission Window: May 1st – 31st, 2023
Payment: 1 cent per word for fiction, $5 for poetry, 1 cent per word for non-fiction, $35 for cover art
Theme: Speculative fiction

It’s our goal to publish diverse voices from around the world, and to do that, we are actively seeking stories, poems, and non-fiction pieces by authors from backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented in the science fiction and fantasy canon. Our submission cycle is therefore split into two categories, where every other month is explicitly reserved for submissions by authors of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and other underrepresented groups. The interposing six months remain open to everyone.

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Artwork / Events / Flash / Magazine / Poetry / Pro

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Taking Submissions: Cosmic Roots And Eldritch Shores May 2023 (Early Listing)

Submission Window: May 1st-3rd, 2023
Payment: 8 cents per word for original, 2 cents for reprints, For artwork: $10 for the non-exclusive right to use each image, for as long as the site is online.  If we publish a print collection we will pay a pro-rata share for each image used.
Theme: Well written original work in science fiction, fantasy, myth, legend, fairy tales, and eldritch, in written, podcast, video, and/or graphic story form, and from around the world.
Note: Reprints welcome

 

 

Submissions Schedule

We have a new submissions schedule as of June 1, 2020:
The first and second day of every month, 12 am of the 1st to 12 am of the 3rd, E.S.T.
Only one submission per person.

For reading impaired individuals, our submissions manager and ‘forget password’ have a captcha compatible with screen readers.

We pay 8¢ per word for new fiction, 2¢ per word for fiction reprints, 2 – 6¢ per word for new fact-based work, 1- 4¢ per word for reprinted fact articles.
For new poetry, we pay $1 a line, reprints would be 50¢ a line, up to 40 lines. We’ll look at longer poems but that would be a hard sell, and words over 40 lines would be paid at 6¢ per word.

We began The Kepler Award to recognize and encourage writers of excellent science fiction and fantasy stories that creatively extrapolate on known science in constructive and exciting ways. You can learn about The Kepler Award here.

You can read a copy of our standard contract here.   It can be varied as needed to include the rights of translators, voice actors, etc.

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Anthology / Events / Flash / Poetry / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: The Pleasure In Pain (Early)

Submission Window: June 1st – July 1st, 2023
Payment: $0.05 per word for short stories. Flat rate of $5 for Poetry and $15 for Flash Fiction
Theme: Queer horror erotica

UNBURY YOUR GAYS

For centuries our stories of romance and love were hidden, coded within for future readers to decipher. There will be none of that here. 

Here’s a shovel.

From Dragon’s Roost Press and Roxie Voorhees, co-editor of MINE and READER BEWARE, comes a collection of queer tales of erotic horror. 

A little scary, a little sexy, and completely queer, this anthology promises to keep you up at night.

 

THE PLEASURE IN PAIN

 

Please read carefully. Submissions that don’t meet the guidelines will be rejected.

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Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Magazine / Poetry / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Apparition Lit May 2023 Window (Early)

Submission Window: May 15th – 31st, 2023
Payment: $0.05 per word for fiction, $50 per poem
Theme: Creature

Apparition Lit is a speculative fiction magazine that publishes themed issues four times a year.

We publish poems and stories between 1k-5k words in January, April, July, and October.

We also hold monthly flash fiction contests between the 1st and 15th of each month. Flash stories must be under 1000 words and be inspired or based on the chosen theme.

Read our submission guidelines and submit your work through our Moksha portal.

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