Category: Semipro

Taking Submissions: Untitled Illustrated Poetry Anthology

Deadline: May 31st, 2024
Payment: Written work: .02c/word, Artwork: $75
Theme: Grim, gothic, morbidly funny, and terrifying works

Calling all poetry authors AND artists!

We’re stepping outside of the box here and trying something new. We’re calling on poets and artists this time to help us craft an illustrated poetry anthology. Give us your limericks, sonnets, haiku, ballads, and free-verse! Have visual poetry? EVEN BETTER. We want grim, gothic, morbidly funny, terrifying works.

Your poetry submission:

  • should be 150 lines (not words) max
  • horror centric
  • any form of poetry is allowed
  • multiple submissions allowed

Your art submission:

  • color or black/white (a color edition is tentatively planned)
  • various sizes/dimensions considered
  • submit as jpg, tiff, png, or pdf
  • multiple submissions allowed
  • NO GENERATIVE AI ART OF ANY KIND.


Est. publication date:
 July 2025
Compensation (written work): .02c/word
Compensation (artwork): $75 (more…)

Taking Submissions: The Joining: Scenes of Wedding Terror

Submission Window: January 1st – March 1st, 2025
Payment: 2 cents per word and a contributors copy
Theme: Mixing horror and weddings

From Jacob Steven Mohr and Crystal Lake Publishing comes The Joining: Scenes of Wedding Terror, a new anthology set to debut (tentatively) September of 2025.

We’re looking for stories between 2,500 and 5,000 words in length concerning the rite of matrimony. Weddings are unusual events, bringing together masses of humanity that might never interact under any other circumstance, requiring them to travel great distances or take part in bizarre rituals ranging from the solemn to the frenzied and sometimes even dangerous…

But: stories submitted to The Joining need not concern only the event itself. They might take place at any time, so long as nuptials are central to the narrative. Imagine it: proposals gone wrong, literal bride-zillas, unsettling in-laws, bachelor parties that end in bloodshed—and of course, trips to destination weddings held just north of Hell itself…

We will be accepting 10-15 stories from this open call. Accepted tales will appear alongside original yarns from a cast of invited authors, including Gemma Files, Joe Koch, J.A.W. McCarthy, Gordon B. White, Jack Lothian, Rae Wilde, and Scott J. Moses… and one mystery guest, as all weddings should no doubt have!

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Taking Submissions: Memento Mori Book One: Relics

Deadline: June 1st, 2025
Payment: 2 cents per word for fiction, 3 words per word for poetry
Theme: The history and power of Memento Mori artifacts or relics

Memento Mori Ink Magazine, in collaboration with Crystal Lake Publishing has issued an open call for submissions to our 2026 anthology.
In this collection, we explore the power of Memento Mori artifacts or relics. We want ancient objects or seemingly mundane items which have the power to whisper to those who possess them.

We are looking for character-driven stories with a focus on the history and source of power behind their chosen object which must be tied to the afterlife, the passage of time, or the thin veil separating the living from the dead. As these objects reveal their secrets, characters must confront their deepest fears and the inevitable reality of their own mortality.
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Ongoing Submissions: Fusion Fragment

Payment: 4 cents CAD per word
Theme: All science fiction but lean towards slipstream, cyberpunk, post-apocalypse, and anything with a little taste of the bizarre

What We Want

  • Science fiction or SF-tinged literary fiction stories and novelettes ranging anywhere from 2,000 to 15,000 words.
  • Although any science fiction subgenre is fair game, our tastes lean towards slipstream, cyberpunk, post-apocalypse, and anything with a little taste of the bizarre. FF prefers character-driven stories, and often skews towards quiet, reflective pieces. If the primary tone of your story is one of high adventure or humour, it’s probably not the right fit for FF. That said, quality always outstrips genre preference in terms of importance, so feel free to send us anything that even vaguely resembles science fiction.
  • We’ll be publishing reprints, but no more than one per issue, so expect acceptance rates to be accordingly lower.
  • Work written by humans. We have no interest in AI-written stories.
  • We’re always interested in publishing work by marginalized voices. If that’s you, and you feel comfortable doing so, please call this out in your cover letter.

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Ongoing Submissions: Phano

Payment: 2 cents per word
Theme: Wondrous, thought-provoking content about the future. Speculative stories about the future, Think Sci-fi, not fantasy or horror

These are guidelines for submitting your work to Phano. We buy rights to short stories and essays at two cents per word. We pay for reviews, interviews and art as work-for-hire.

We are currently open for new submissions! Read on to find out how to submit your work.

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Taking Submissions: Spoon Knife 10

Deadline: July 31st, 2025
Payment: $30 plus 1 cent per word and a contributors copy
Theme: Genre-bending stories that feature Polarities

Autonomous Press is now accepting submissions of short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry for the 10th volume of Spoon Knife, our annual genre-bending lit anthology.

Please read this whole page carefully before submitting; some details have changed this time around!

Theme

The theme for Spoon Knife 10 will be Polarities.

Polarities: pairs of opposite forces or qualities or tendencies. Good and evil. Love and hate. Life and death. Heroism and villainy. Feminine and masculine. Night and day. Vice and virtue. Old and new. Order and chaos. The public persona and the hidden shadow self. The mundane everyday world and that which lies beyond.

What polarity lies at the heart of your story? In what ways does it manifest? What happens when the two sides of the polarity come into contact or conflict, or when one transforms into the other?

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Taking Submissions: Solar Punk Magazine October 2024 Window

Submission Window: October 1st-14th, 2024
Payment: Fiction: 1500-7500 words ($.08 per word, $100 minimum), Poetry: One poem of up to three pages ($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: Speculative fiction works that stir readers with themes of defiance, change, and achievement

Submissions are currently closed. Our next and final submission windows for 2024 will be open from October 1-14, 2024. Our 2025 submission schedule will be released by the end of summer 2024.

(Note: At the moment, our nonfiction department is always open for submissions. If the fiction, poetry, and art portals are closed and you submit those through the open nonfiction portal, your submission will be automatically rejected without being considered.)

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Taking Submissions: Solar Punk Magazine July 2024 Window

Submission Window: July 1st – 14th, 2024
Payment: Fiction: 1500-7500 words ($.08 per word, $100 minimum), Poetry: One poem of up to three pages ($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: Radically hopeful and optimistic science fiction and fantasy

(At the moment, our nonfiction department is current and always open for submissions. If the fiction portal is closed and you submit fiction through the open nonfiction portal, your submission will be rejected.)

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.

In 2024, we are particularly looking for stories between 1,500 and 3,000 words. While our word limit remains 7,500, stories that fall between 1,500 and 3,000 will have a better chance of being selected for at least the first few submission periods in 2024.

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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