Deadline: September 22nd, 2024
Payment: Artwork: Cover $250, Interior: $50, Creative Non-Fiction & Fiction: 10 cents per word, Poetry: $50 per page, Reprints: 2 cents per word
Theme: No set theme or genre as long, though they lean towards any aspect of environmental justice, from food sovereignty to ocean plastics to industrial cleanup to Indigenous rights

Reckoning 9 is open for general submissions! There is no specific theme for this issue; if your work concerns any aspect of environmental justice, from food sovereignty to ocean plastics to industrial cleanup to Indigenous rights, we want to see it. In fact, we look forward most eagerly to perspectives none of us has thought of. Please help us learn and understand.

The editors for the issue will be C.G. Aubrey, Priya Chand, and Catherine Rockwood, with help and support from the rest of the wonderful and brilliant Reckoning staff.

As always, we are seeking art, poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction up to 20,000 words in length, in particular from Indigenous, Black, Brown, queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent and/or otherwise marginalized writers and artists from everywhere, and we pay $50/page for poetry and art, 10c/word for prose. Deadline for this issue is the solar equinox, September 22, 2024.

We’re always open to submissions. There are never any fees to submit. We pay SFWA-qualifying “professional” rates upon acceptance; click below to see how much for different kinds of work. Response time has ranged from one to six months and is slowest October through January, when we’re putting together a new issue and editors for the following issue have not been chosen.

We’re currently reading for Reckoning 9. Issue editors and specific guidelines are here.

To see what we’re looking for, try Reckoning 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, the special issues, the podcast, the interviews, or even LCRW 33.

The short version: creative writing and art about environmental justice.

We are always seeking work from Indigenous writers and artists, racialized writers and artists, queer, trans and/or disabled writers and artists, and anyone, anywhere in the world, who has suffered the consequences, intended or otherwise, of dominant society’s systemic disconnect with and mistreatment of the natural world. And we’re seeking new ways to reach all of the above. Seriously, if you know of a way we can do that, please share.

We don’t publish ecofascism or work we perceive to be prejudiced in any form, including sexism, racism, ableism, ageism. We reserve the right to point it out—respectfully—when we see it, though we’re as prone to mistakes and misunderstanding as anyone else. Here’s a start on a list of what else doesn’t work for us.

For genre-specific guidelines and to submit, please choose from the categories below:

Artwork

The magazine’s theme of environmental justice and what we say in our main submission guidelines very much apply to what we’re seeking in artwork. We’re interested in the surreal, subversive and political, not so much in the pulpy or abstract. We prefer a certain amount of directness: if your work requires explanatory text for us to perceive its connection to the theme, we’re less likely to be interested. It might also help to look through this archive of (nearly) all the art we’ve featured in Reckoning so far.

We buy only one or two covers a year. We prefer cover art to suit the form factor of our print edition, which is 9 x 6 inch trade paper with 1/8 inch bleeds; dimensions for the full wraparound are in the area of 9.25 x 13 inches. Our covers are printed in full color, and we need 300 DPI minimum. For cover artwork, we pay $250 (US) or as negotiated.

We’d love to be able to feature at least a half dozen pieces of interior art per issue. Interior art will appear online, in the ebook and in print, so if it’s not in black and white, it should at least translate to black and white reasonably well. The printable area for an interior page is 7.125 x 4 inches, 300 DPI minimum, and on the website images are displayed at up to 1152 pixels in width. We do our best to adapt your work to all formats! For interior art we pay $50 (US) per piece or as negotiated.

We have not yet had occasion to formulate an art-specific contract; general sample contract is here.

Moksha, our submissions manager, will accept artwork in any common web-ready format (.jpeg, .jpg, .png, .bmp, .gif, or .svg), but only one at a time. If you’d like to submit multiple pieces, please compile them into a PDF or Word document or include a link to an online gallery. There is an upper limit on submission size of 10MB, so you may want to compress images; we’ll ask for higher-resolution versions later if needed.

We’re no longer accepting submissions by email; please submit your work via our Moksha submission portal.

Feel free to query with any questions!

Creative Non-Fiction

The essays we publish tend to be more creative than journalistic; we like at least a bit of narrative with our information. Everything from the main submission guidelines applies!

Length: 0 – 20,000 words (query for longer). Payment: 10 cents (US)/word. Sample contract is here.

Feel free to query with any questions; for creative nonfiction, either pitches or full submissions are welcome.

Simultaneous submissions are ok. Multiple submissions are discouraged. Feel free to submit again after you hear back.

We’re no longer accepting submissions by email; please submit your work via our Moksha submission portal.

Fiction:

The fiction we publish is mostly, but not exclusively, speculative. We appreciate surreal and experimental pieces as well as strong plotting, but prefer writing that doesn’t lean too far into pulp. Everything from the main submission guidelines applies, as well as the list of what doesn’t work for us.

Length: 0 – 20,000 words (query for longer). Payment: 10 cents (US)/word. Sample contract is here.

Feel free to query with any questions, though for original fiction we prefer you submit a completed manuscript without bothering to pitch us first.

Simultaneous submissions are ok. Multiple submissions are discouraged. Feel free to submit again after you hear back.

We’re no longer accepting submissions by email; please submit your work via our Moksha submission portal.

Poetry:

Our interests in poetry tend towards the narrative, preferably with some thematic heft. We’re open to long poems, short poems, hybrid art/poetry, and all kinds of formalism. Everything from the main submission guidelines applies!

Length: 0 – 10 pages (query for longer). Payment: $50 (US)/page. Sample contract is here.

Feel free to query with any questions, though for poetry there’s no need to pitch us; if it’s about environmental justice, we want to see it.

Simultaneous submissions are ok. Multiple submissions are encouraged: we prefer 3-5 poems or 10 pages, whichever is shorter, combined in a single document. Feel free to submit again after you hear back.

We’re no longer accepting submissions by email; please submit your work via our Moksha submission portal.

Reprints

Please query for reprints and let us know when and where the piece originally appeared. If you don’t query first, we’re likely to delete your submission unread.

We are most interested in reprinting work that is on-theme (everything from the main submission guidelines applies) and still relevant, but which our readership isn’t likely to have already seen. This could mean anything that appeared a few years ago and/or in a relatively obscure or now-defunct market.

Length: 0 – 20,000 words (query for longer). Payment: 2 cents (US)/word. Sample contract is here.

Simultaneous submissions are ok. Multiple submissions are discouraged. Feel free to submit again after you hear back.

We’re no longer accepting submissions by email; please submit your work via our Moksha submission portal.

Via: Reckoning Press.