Category: Poetry

Taking Submissions: Haven Speculative 2024 General Submissions Call #2 (Early)

Submission Window: April 1st – 30th, 2024
Payment: 8 cent per word for fiction, $20 for poetry, 8 cent per word for non-fiction, $125 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.

As writers ourselves, we do our best to handle each submission with the care and attention it deserves. Every submission is an act of bravery, and we know that putting yourself out there as a writer can be tough. Just know that any submission we receive, unless it contains something illegal, will be kept in confidence.

When in doubt, don’t self reject! Submit submit submit!


Guidelines for Fiction

We like stories that are subtle in their telling and stick with us long after we’ve finished, and we’re more likely to buy stories that balance a sense of wonder with a bold plot and emotional depth. For our two issues focused on the climate crisis, we’re particularly interested in publishing stories from people displaced by or threatened by the climate emergency (see our themes below). For our other four issues, we’re open to a wide variety of stories across the SFF and weird spectra.

  • Pay: 8¢ per word for original fiction
  • Word limit: 6000 words
  • Language: English
  • Rights: We buy first serial print and electronic rights for publication of the story in the English language and throughout the world. We also buy non-exclusive archival rights for our website and non-exclusive anthology rights.

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Taking Submissions: Hemorrhaging Flowers: A Collection of 100% Femme Rage

Deadline: April 30th, 2024
Payment: $10 USD
Theme: Poems inspired by feminine rage. All speculative tropes are welcome

OpensMarch 1s 2024, midnight EST 

ClosesApril 30, 2024, midnight IDLW

Compensation: $10 USD

Theme: Adult speculative poetry

Submissions must be under 50 lines

OPEN to any and everyone that identifies (now or in the past) as femme in the most inclusive of definitions.

Expected release: March 2024

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Taking Submissions: NonBinary Review #37

Deadline: August 1st, 2024
Payment: $10 for poetry, $25 for artwork, 1 cent per word for fiction
Theme: False Memories
Note: Reprints Welcome

NonBinary Review is currently open for submissions on the theme of FALSE MEMORIES.

False memories first came to public consciousness in the 1980s when a group of pre-schoolers at a California preschool were coached by well-meaning social workers and police investigators into “remembering” Satanic abuse that never happened. The fallout from that episode wasn’t just the persecution of an innocent family, but a nationwide mass delusion now known as “the Satanic Panic,” where authorities were warning the public about supposed widespread satanic cults committing heinous acts of abuse. Not a single one of these warnings were founded in fact, and it is now known that a large number of them were propaganda.

But false memories aren’t always bad. There is a common phenomenon wherein people hear stories of their early childhoods so often that those stories turn into “memories.” It is common in dreams to have “memories” of things that happened to the dream self, but not to the real self. Or a person might believe that they took their regular medication, brought in the garbage bins, or picked up the mail when they haven’t.

We’re looking for weird and wonderful stories of not just the memories themselves, but of their production, their repercussions, their wider meanings. We’re looking for false memories that might have changed history, that led to remarkable discoveries, that impacted lives.

We’re NOT looking stories of recovered memories. Recovered memories are memories of real events that have been suppressed because they’re traumatic, and are a widely disputed phenomenon. We would also like to avoid stories centering abuse, trauma, and violence.

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Taking Submissions: Sundog Literature 2024 Window #1

Deadline: March 1st – May 1st, 2024
Payment: $50
Theme: Writing that attempts to salvage something pure from the collision of warmth and cold, that says what it can about the world it finds itself in.

A Note on Our Aesthetic

We believe there is beauty in scars on smooth skin, in the small fissures where things begin to break apart. Sundogs are not the sun itself but phantom stars appearing on the horizon, illusions produced by the play of the sun’s heat with crystals of ice. They shed their light all the same. Many are tinged with color.

We look for this same quality in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. We want writing that attempts to salvage something pure from the collision of warmth and cold, that says what it can about the world it finds itself in. We seek a diversity of voices speaking from visceral, lived experience. We like truth we can stare at until our eyes water, words so carefully chosen we want to reread them as soon as we have finished.

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Taking Submissions: SpeKulative Stories Anthology Series

Deadline: November 30th, 2024
Payment: 10 cents per word for fiction and $2/line for poetry. Also, a contributor’s copy
Theme: Speculative short stories and poems that either include trains or aliens as their focal point

The purpose of the SpeKulative Stories Anthology Series is to showcase provocative and powerful tales related to a single theme. Following the publication of our first theme anthology, Automobilia, in 2024, we are now seeking short stories and poems for the next two anthologies in the series. The titles are Train Tales and Aliens Among Us. Publication is set for early 2025.

As each title suggests, a train or an alien (space aliens that is) should be such an integral part of your story or poem that if removed the story or poem collapses.

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Taking Submissions: Midwest Futures: Poems from Tomorrow’s Heartland

Deadline: July 1st, 2024
Payment: Contributor’s Copy
Theme: Speculative poems and micro-prose (300 words max.) engaging with themes of environmentalism, climate change, technology, and more through a lens of Midwestern experience.

Middle West Press LLC, an independent micro-publisher based in Central Iowa, has issued a call for human-generated poems and micro-prose (300 words max.) engaging with themes of environmentalism, climate change, technology, and more through a lens of Midwestern experience.
The working title of this project is Midwest Futures: Poems from Tomorrow’s Heartland.
Deadline for submissions is Jul. 1, 2024. Publication is projected for Spring/Summer 2025.
Submit via Submittable here at this link.
This is explicitly a speculative poetry (and related micro-flash-prose) market. We are interested not only in the gritty and grounded, but also near-future science-fiction-infused visions of the possible. For inspirations and vibes, see also movements such “Solarpunk,” “Eco-modernism” and “Climate Fiction” (“Cli-Fi”), as well as these potential exemplars of eco-poetry and other writing:

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Taking Submissions: The Quarterly Journal – WET

Deadline: April 30th, 2024
Payment: $5
Theme: Wet

A Literary Journal with Some Art, Comics, and Analysis Thrown in for Good Measure

As Quarter Press continues to grow, we’re adding another coin to our pocketful of change. We want to offer a space for shorter works to mingle with art and other bits of nonsense, so we bring you The Quarter(ly): It just makes cents.

Issues are themed; however, we consider all interpretations.

2024’s Themes and Deadlines:

WET (April 30)

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Taking Submissions: The Stygian Zine July 2024 Issue

Deadline: May 31st, 2024
Payment: $20 (CAD) and a contributors copy
Theme: Writing on your view of the meaning of the word “Stygian”

After the release of our first publication “The Stygian Collection”, there was demand to continue producing anthologies. To continue growing our community and keep the anthology spirit alive, The Stygian Society will be releasing a literary zine every January and July!

Focusing on the theme “Stygian”, we ask writers to meditate on their meaning of the word. We are open to poetry, short stories, non-fiction articles, personal insights and visual art (including comics)!

For written works please do not exceed 2500 words (poetry included). For comics please do not exceed 5 pages.

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