Category: Pro

Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events / Flash / Pro

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Taking Submissions: The Map of Lost Places (Early)

Submission Window: December 1st – 31st, 2023
Payment: 8 cents per word and a contributors copy
Theme: Stories about places where weird things happen

Editors Sheree Renée Thomas and Lesley Conner are looking for stories about places where weird things happen. Places that have strange histories, their own traditions and customs, their own dangers. These can be based off real folk tales or old wives tales – think the Mothman in Point Pleasant, WV – or ones that you come up with all on your own. But your story should tell of someone going to one of these places – either intentionally or they just stumble across it – and what happens when they encounter the frightening/strange thing that is in or occurs in that location.

Depending on the Map of Lost Places Kickstarter funding level, we expect to fill the anthology with eight to twelve original stories selected from an open reading period. The Kickstarter will launch on October 10 – click here to be notified as soon as it happens!

In order to avoid duplicates in the open submission call, locations already chosen by the featured authors are listed below. This list will be updated as the authors make their decisions, so be sure to check back!
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Events / Flash / Magazine / Pro / Reprints Allowed

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Ongoing Submissions: The Cosmic Background

Payment: 8 cents per word, 3 cents per word for reprints
Theme: Slipstream fiction

We want the single best piece of flash fiction you have that comes from the places in-between. We are primarily a slipstream publication — that means we like your stories that don’t make a ton of sense. We want your giant talking frogs. We want your people with unexplained, never commented-upon eyes in their fingertips. We enjoy character-focused writing, with an emphasis on voice. We love Kelly Link, George Saunders, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Sarah Pinsker, Shingai Njeri-Kagunda, Christopher Rowe, and Kate Folk. 

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Artwork / Events / Flash / Magazine / Poetry / Pro / Reprints Allowed

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Taking Submissions: Reckoning 8

Deadline: September 22nd, 2023
Payment: 10 cents/word, 2 cents/word reprints, $50/page of poetry, $50 minimum per piece of artwork.
Theme: All of the current social issues that are happening

We’re very excited to announce, for the forthcoming Reckoning 8, editors Knar Gavin and Waverly SM! Read on for their issue-specific submission call.

Reckoning is a journal of creative writing on environmental justice; we’re looking for fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, poetry and art.

For Reckoning 8, we want thinking, writing and art about … this. All of this, right now. We want to hear about active resistance to the patriarchofascist, corporate-captured extractive state. Show us what it means that in order to build Cop City*, a massive facility intended to train a new generation of lethal enforcers into an institution directly descended from slave patrols, the state of Georgia and its actors must first level a forest and label protestors “domestic terrorists” as a precursor to murdering them. Help us understand how strategies of repression and control all over the world concentrate agency in the hands of the few at the expense of all other life. We are looking for work in opposition to a broad, insidious fascism that treats water, trees, and bodies as exploitable, expendable resources rather than sacred, essential components of our global, infinitely interconnected and interdependent web of life.

As always, we’re seeking work from people of all genders or none, all sexualities or none, of all neurotypes, all levels of physical ability, from all racial and ethnic backgrounds, in all parts of the world. We’d love to add all languages to that, though we publish in English and are currently limited to reading submissions for potential translation in Spanish, French and Swedish.

Payment is 10 cents/word, $50/page of poetry, $50 minimum per piece of artwork. We don’t charge submission fees.

We’re always open to submissions. Deadline for Reckoning 8 is the solar equinox, September 22, 2023.

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Anthology / Events / Pro

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Taking Submissions: Diabolical Plots July 2023 Window

Submission Window: July 17th-31st, 2023
Payment: 10 cents per word
Theme: science fiction, fantasy, horror (everything must have a speculative element, even horror).

Our planned windows are:

  • July 17-31, 2023: General submission window

David Steffen is the editor, who you may also know from reading The Long List Anthology series or from the Submission Grinder, which you can use to find markets for your writing and track your submissions.  Diabolical Plots is a SFWA-qualifying market, so if you have a personal goal to join SFWA, making a sale here would help you toward that goal.

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Artwork / Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Magazine / Non-fiction / Poetry / Pro / Reprints Allowed

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Taking Submissions: Solarpunk Magazine July 2023 Window

Submission Window: July 1st – 14th, 2023
Payment: Fiction: 1500-7500 words ($.08 per word, $100 minimum), Poetry: up to 5 poems or 5 pages of poems, whichever is shorter. ($40 per poem), Nonfiction: 1000-2000 words ($75 per essay or article), Cover Art: $100 for reprints, $200 for original unpublished, Interior Art: $50 for reprints, $100 for original unpublished
Theme: Hopeful short stories and poetry that strive for a utopian ideal, that are set in futures where communities are optimistically struggling to solve or adapt to climate change, to create or maintain a world in which humanity, technology, and nature coexist in harmony rather than in conflict.

All submissions to Solarpunk Magazine are done via Moksha. Any submissions received via email will be deleted without a response. Please don’t email us to describe your story and ask if it’s something we’d be interested in before submitting. We appreciate the consideration, but its easier if you just submit the story through Moksha.

Please read the full submission guidelines on down below or on our Moksha page before submitting your work. All submission periods end at 11:59 pm PST on the 14th of their given month.

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Artwork / Events / Magazine / Pro

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Taking Submissions: khōréō July 2023 (Early Listing)

Submission Window: July 1st – 30th, 2023
Payment: 8 cents per word and $500 for custom cover art and $100 for cover art drawn from an artist’s existing portfolio.
Theme: Fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and any genre in between or around it, as long as there’s a speculative element.
Note: You must identify as an immigrant or member of a diaspora in the broadest definitions of the terms. This includes, but is not limited to, first- and second-generation immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, persons who identify with one or more diaspora communities, persons who have been displaced or whose heritage has been erased due to colonialism/imperialism, and anyone whose heritage and history includes ‘here and elsewhere’.

khōréō is a quarterly publication of stories, essays, and art: fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and any genre in between or around it, as long as there’s a speculative element. We’re especially interested in writing and art that explore some aspect of migration, whether explicitly (themes of immigration, colonialism, etc.), metaphorically, or with a sly nod and a wink. Most importantly, we’re a new magazine and we’re still finding our identity: therefore, please don’t self-reject because you’re not sure if your work is a good fit. We won’t know until we see it, so please give us a chance to look!

See submission requirements & how to submit at the following pages:

Who can submit?

khōréō is dedicated to diversity and amplifying the voices of immigrant and diaspora authors and artists. We welcome, but do not require, a brief description of the author’s/artist’s identity in their cover letter.

We invite you to submit if you identify as an immigrant or member of a diaspora in the broadest definitions of the terms. This includes, but is not limited to, first- and second-generation immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, persons who identify with one or more diaspora communities, persons who have been displaced or whose heritage has been erased due to colonialism/imperialism, and anyone whose heritage and history includes ‘here and elsewhere’. We especially encourage BIPOC creators who identify as the above to submit their work.

When reading submissions, we take in good faith that you identify as an immigrant or member of a diaspora as described above. If you still aren’t sure if you should submit, please email [email protected].

We kindly request individuals who do not identify as such to support the magazine by reading our stories, subscribing, and helping spread the word instead.

Submission Periods

Our next submission period will open at midnight Eastern time on January 1, 2021. We will close submissions at 11:59pm on January 31, 2021.

In our first year, we will have the following reading periods:

  • January 1-January 31
  • April 1-April 30
  • July 1-July 30
  • October 1-October 31

Via: khōréō.

Events / Magazine / Pro / Reprints Allowed

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Taking Submissions: Mysterion July 2023 Window

Deadline: July 31st, 2023
Payment: 8 cents/word and 4 cents/word for reprints
Theme: Speculative stories–science fiction, fantasy, horror–with Christian themes, characters, or cosmology
Note: Reprints Welcome

We are looking for speculative stories–science fiction, fantasy, horror–with Christian themes, characters, or cosmology, and for artwork for this site.

Fiction Guidelines

Technical details

  • Stories can be up to 9000 words (thanks, Patreon supporters!). This is a hard limit–our submission system will enforce it.
  • We pay 8 cents/word for original stories (or original translations of stories that have not previously appeared in English), and 4 cents/word for reprints (thanks again, Patreon!).
    • Authors are paid once we’ve agreed on edits and signed a contract, prior to earliest publication (generally on our Patreon page).
  • We are seeking 6 months’ exclusive worldwide publication rights for original works (with exceptions for established Best of the Year anthologies), and non-exclusive worldwide print and electronic rights thereafter for both original works and reprints.
    • We want to publish your story online in our webzine and keep it there indefinitely.
    • We’re also acquiring the right to offer ebook versions of the stories we publish, as Patreon rewards or for purchase; and to publish a print and ebook anthology of all the stories that appeared in the webzine over a given 1- or 2-year period.
    • For original fiction, we want to be the only place publishing it for the first 6 months; after that, you’re welcome to publish it anywhere else in any format you like.
  • No multiple or simultaneous submissions.
    • If multiple writers co-write a story, we consider each distinct group of writers a different submitter. In other words, if two people co-write a story, and they submit the co-written story, and each of them also submits a story written on their own, that would not violate our no multiple submissions policy. Submitting two stories co-written by the same two people would violate our no multiple submissions policy.
  • Don’t resubmit a story we’ve rejected unless we request revisions.
  • We usually manage to respond to everyone within four months of the submission window’s closing. Feel free to query ([email protected]) if it’s been longer than four months since the end of the submission period.
  • Format requirements:
    • Stories must be double spaced, in 12-point Times New Roman or Courier font.
    • The story title, your byline, a word count, and contact information should appear on the first page, and your last name, story title, and page number should appear in the header information of all other pages.
    • If you want to make our lives easier, our preferred format is Times New Roman, italics for emphasis, one space after periods and colons, smart quotes, m-dashes instead of double hyphens, and first line of paragraph indented 0.5″ in Paragraph formatting instead of with the Tab key. But we aren’t that particular about any of this when evaluating your stories.
  • Stories should be submitted via the Moksha submissions system: https://mysterion.moksha.io/publication/mysterion.
  • Submit your stories in .doc, .docx, or .rtf format.
  • Your cover letter should contain a list of your three or four most prestigious publications (if any), and any pertinent biographical details: tell us if you’re an astronaut writing about space travel, but not if you’re an astronaut writing about the elf-dwarf war. Invert that if you’re an elf. If you’ve met us in person, feel free to mention it. Finally, let us know if the story is previously published and where it first appeared–even if it appeared on your blog or Twitter feed. Don’t try to summarize your story or explain why it’s a good fit for our publication (if it’s a good fit, we should be able to tell by reading it).

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Audio / Events / Flat Amount / Pro / Reprints Allowed

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Taking Submissions: The Cast of Wonders: Banned Books Week (Early)

Submission Window: June 1st – 14th, 2023
Payment: 8 cents/word for originals, $100/short story or $20/flash piece for reprints
Theme: Guiding Sparks Between the Words: How Stories Illuminate the World Around Us

Every year in September, Cast of Wonders celebrates Banned Books Week, an annual international event celebrating the freedom to read and raising awareness of the immense social value of free and open access to information.

Joining the editorial team for this year’s call is Cast of Wonders Associate Editor, Simon Pan. Thank you, Simon, for the wonderful theme this year!

Guiding Sparks Between the Words: How Stories Illuminate the World Around Us

In times of conflict, division and change, it is more important than ever to build bridges of understanding.  We most commonly encounter the stories of others through news articles or in classrooms, kept at a scholarly or journalistic distance and often biased to favour privileged perspectives. Our own truths may also remain unvoiced and unknown, misunderstood even by those around us.

When it comes to illuminating these truths, stories have a key part to play: they help us to learn and appreciate things from perspectives we might never otherwise consider, and allow us to reshape our own experiences within the transformative lens of fiction. When we share our stories, we guide sparks of kinship and understanding, using narrative and emotion to help others experience a small window into another’s reality.

For Banned Books Week 2023, we want to see stories of discovery, of learning, of misconceptions unraveled, and how stories can serve as a guiding light to help us understand a new perspective, or to teach us valuable lessons when all other methods fail us. What that something is…well, that is up to you!

At Cast of Wonders, we welcome stories that portray the full spectrum of human experience. We don’t challenge stories; we want stories to challenge us! Cast of Wonders looks for stories that evoke a sense of wonder, have deep emotional resonance, and have something unreal about them. We aim for a 12-17 age range: that means sophisticated, non-condescending stories with wide appeal, and without gratuitous or explicit sex, violence, or pervasive obscene language.

Preference for this submission window is under 5,000 words with an absolute limit of 6,000 words. Flash submissions under 1.5k are also very welcome!

Submissions must adhere to Cast of Wonders guidelines.  Submissions will be accepted from June 1 to June 14 through our Moksha Portal – we can’t wait to read what you send in!

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