Submission Window: March 20th to April 20th, 2024
Payment: $50 upon publication
Theme: Stories about how we seek out, discover, and grasp onto connection in all genres with a particular fondness for anything that moves beyond realism in form or content or spirit

At Astrolabe, we’re looking for work about how we seek out, discover, and grasp onto connection. Into the woods. Across a line. Beneath the ocean. Along a seam. Into the branches of an alternate present or the crevasse of an alternate future. Across the rifts between one another.

And then, once we find one other, the myths we make.

We’re excited to see as many interpretations of this broad theme as there are stars in the night sky.

We’re open to work of all genres, with a particular fondness for anything that moves beyond realism in form or content or spirit.

Read about Astrolabe for details on our mission and what we’re doing with the Universe.

The details

Astrolabe is open for submissions year-round temporarily closed for submissions. We pay a $50 honorarium upon publication of one or more pieces from your submission.

To help fund those payments, we alternate between free and paid submission periods throughout the year. Our free periods begin the day we publish new work—on the spring equinox, summer solstice, autumnal equinox, and winter solstice—and stay open for a month.

We’re temporarily closing for all submissions beginning on December 21, 2023 to help us catch up with the queue and spend time with our families. We’ll re-open to free submissions on March 20, 2024.

Here are the free periods for 2024:

• March 20th to April 20th
• June 20st to July 20st
• September 22nd to October 22nd
• December 21st to Jan 21, 2025

Some additional details:

• We currently accept three types of work: fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography & art. See below for genre-specific instructions. We’re not a market for lineated poetry at the moment.
• We do accept simultaneous submissions, but please let us know if your work was accepted for publication elsewhere—we’ll be thrilled for your good news!
• No multiple submissions—and if we don’t accept your work, please wait until our next submission period before trying again unless we specifically ask for more work.
• We consider only unpublished work.

We ask for first North American serial rights and non-exclusive print/anthology rights. All copyrights remain yours. Read more about the rights we ask for.

Fiction & creative nonfiction

Send us up to three pieces, of no more than 3,000 words in total, in .doc, .docx, or .pdf format.

We’ll happily consider fiction and CNF in all prose forms—prose poetry, micro, flash, and beyond—but we’re not considering lineated poetry at the moment.

Photography & art

Send us up to five pieces in .jpg, .png, or .pdf format.

If your artwork doesn’t work in one of those formats—for example, if you’ve built something dynamic or interactive—send a link to where we can view it online, or just ask!

Time to submit!

We are temporarily closed to submissions. Our next free submission period is open between Wednesday, March 20th and Saturday, April 20th, 2024.

Track your submissions on Duotrope, Chill Subs, or The Submission Grinder!

Your rights

Astrolabe asks for first North American serial rights (FNASR) to your work, which ensures that we’re the first place this work appears. Once your work is published on Astrolabe, all electronic and print rights revert back to you—you can republish the piece as you see fit. We also ask for non-exclusive anthology and print rights. This allows us to use your work in a possible future anthology, but doesn’t prevent you from pursuing other anthology or print opportunities in the meantime.

The copyright to your work remains yours at all times.

Questions?

Email us at [email protected].

Via: Astrolabe.