Submission Window: December 21st to January 21st, 2024
Payment: $50
Theme: Stories about how we seek out, discover, and grasp onto connection.

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. 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.

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• We consider only unpublished work.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 one piece no more than 3,000 words .doc, .docx, or .pdf format. If submitting flash, send up to three pieces of no more than 1,000 words each.

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, .gif, 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 currently open for free submissions until Sunday, October 22nd, 2023!

1. Send your submission to [email protected] with the following subject line, replacing the parts in green:Submission: Your Name, “Title”Include a short cover letter, bio, and your work as an attachment(s).We welcome pen names, author names, or pseudonyms. No need to include your legal name, physical address, phone number, or other personal information with your submission—the name you publish under and your email address is enough!

We’ll get back to you within three months—if we take longer, it typically means we’re seriously considering your work, but you can always feel free to query us: [email protected]. We’re strong believers that Wednesday is the least painful day of the week to send (or receive) a rejection.

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.