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Deadline: November 1st, 2021 Payment: short story, $25; short-short piece (up to 1000 words), $10; poem, $10 Theme: Get It Over With! Note: Reprints Welcome Upcoming premises (target themes) and deadlines for submission : Watch the Birdie! (July 1, 2021) Get It Over With! (November 1, 2021) To the Pond (March 1, 2022) To download a PDF file of the guidelines, click here . ALL SHORT STORIES, ESSAYS, POEMS, PHOTOGRAPHS and ART MUST RELATE TO ONE OF THE PREMISES SPECIFIED ABOVE. NOTE: Previously published pieces are welcome, provided that the submission fits the theme and that the author owns the copyright. The premise (target theme) must be an integral part of the plot, not necessarily the central theme but not merely incidental. Fewer than 20 double-spaced typewritten pages preferred. Indicate premise (target theme) on title page. Be sure to Indicate target theme in cover letter or on first page of manuscript. Include self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) with each submission. Rejected manuscripts unaccompanied by an SASE will not be returned. Response time: 3 months after premise deadline.  NO READER'S FEE. Mail to: THEMA, Box 8747, Metairie, LA 70011-8747. Outside the US: email [email protected] On acceptance for publication, we will pay the following amount: short story, $25; short-short piece (up to 1000 words), $10; poem, $10; artwork, $25 for cover, $10 for interior page display. Copyright reverts to author after publication. THEMA isn't for everyone. To find out why, click here. New to submitting manuscripts to journals? Click here to download a PDF file of a few basic guidelines. Unlike many publishers, we prefer works submitted by the authors themselves, without the involvement of an agent. Be sure to indicate premise and include SASE for each submission.  BE SURE to include a separate SASE for each premise. No handwritten manuscripts will be considered. NOTE: We do not accept e-mailed submissions EXCEPT from authors who live outside the U.S....

Deadline: November 1st, 2021 Payment: 15GBP Theme: Video Gamers II If you think you’ve got what it takes to terrify, scar and haunt our audience of 10,000 daily listeners, then we want your stories! If accepted, we'll get our fantastic narration team to lend their voices, our editor will sprinkle some magic pixie dust on the track, and you could have your story heard by thousands of listeners each week. (Vol 73.) Video Gamers II; deadline 1st November 2021 !!!NEW SUBMISSION PROCESS!!! SUBMIT YOUR STORIES USING THIS FORM If, this form isn’t working, then please email your submission to [email protected] as a last resort. But please let us know why as we’re hoping to use the form going forward. Title your email with the following syntax: SUBMISSION | STORY TITLE | THEME | WORDCOUNT (e.g. SUBMISSION | THE MARTIAN | SPACE | 1,982) It is important that your story complies with our Submission Guidelines. Any stories found not to be in compliance will be immediately discarded. Click HERE for details If you think you’ve got what it takes to terrify, scar and haunt our audience of 10,000 daily listeners, then we want your stories! If accepted, we'll get our fantastic narration team to lend their voices, our editor will sprinkle some magic pixie dust on the track, and you could have your story heard by thousands of listeners each week. HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO DO: • Stories must be 2,000 (10% tolerance +/-) • Save stories in a Word document - Times New Roman font, size 12 • Include a 1-2 sentence log line for your story at the end of the document • Ensure that your name and an email address are somewhere on the document • Stories must fit an upcoming theme • By submitting your story...

Deadline: November 1st, 2021 Payment: $25.00 - $50.00 for fiction, $5.00 - $10.00 for poetry Theme: Story must begin with: "Later that evening, they sat alone in their apartment, wondering if they had made the right decision." We love that writers around the world are inspired by our first lines, and we know that not every story will be sent to us. However, we ask that you do not submit stories starting with our first lines to other journals (or post them online on public sites) until we've notified you as to our decision (usually three to four weeks after the deadline). When the entire premise of the publication revolves around one sentence, we don't want it to look as if we stole that sentence from another writer. If you have questions, feel free to drop us a line. Also, we understand that writers may add our first line to a story they are currently working on or have already completed, and that's cool. But please do not add our first line to a previously published story and submit it to us. We do not accept previously published stories, even if they have been repurposed for our first lines. And, just to be clear, we do not accept simultaneous submissions. One more thing while I've got you here: Writers compete against one another for magazine space, so, technically, every literary magazine is running a contest. There are, however, literary magazines that run traditional contests, where they charge entry fees and rank the winners. We do not - nor will we ever - charge a submission fee, nor do we rank our stories in order of importance. Occasionally, we run contests to help come up with new first lines, or we run fun, gimmicky competitions for free stuff, but the actual journal...

Deadline: November 1st, 2021 Payment: $50 (US) for each original short story or novelette (up to 17,500 words) or $25 for flash (up to 1000 words) or poem (up to 100 lines). Theme: Noir Fiction combined with the existing goals of TFF (progressive, feminist, queer, postcolonial, inclusive, accessible, ecological and international speculative and genre fiction). Note: Reprints are welcome but the pay is half the above Call for stories and poems for a Noir-themed issue/anthology from The Future Fire to be published in early 2022, guest edited by Valeria Vitale. We are looking for stories that combine themes or aesthetic from Noir fiction and cinema with the existing goals of TFF (progressive, feminist, queer, postcolonial, inclusive, accessible, ecological and international speculative and genre fiction). Stories by authors from under-represented groups are especially welcome, although you are not expected or required to self-identify in any way. Submissions need not include science-fictional or fantastic settings, but we are mostly likely to be interested in those that play with genre and Noir aesthetic in some way, including cyberpunk. Tropes we are not generally interested in include: Women who die just to make the male protagonist sad Characters committing or enabling crimes to hide their sexual orientation/preferences Other plots whose impact revolves entirely around normative/puritanical/prejudiced assumptions (characters may have such opinions, but the story shouldn’t validate them) Detective stories where law and order unproblematically win the day Please submit stories for the attention of the editors of this issue by sending as a .docx or .doc attachment to [email protected] with subject line “TFF NOIR (title) (wordcount),” before the end of November 1, 2021. TFF Noir will pay $50 (US) for each original short story or novelette (up to 17,500 words) or $25 for flash (up to 1000 words) or poem (up to 100 lines). (Please note that for some longer stories this will amount to under 1¢/word, and...

Deadline: November 1st, 2021 Payment: 8 cents a word Theme: a horror anthology showcasing BIPOC and other ethnically marginalized writers and artists from around the world. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES What is horror to those living in the margins? Where terror is systematized and in the very air everyone happily breathes? A misheard word. The thud of boots. An impossible color. A foreign growth. DEATH IN THE MOUTH is a horror anthology showcasing BIPOC and other ethnically marginalized writers and artists from around the world. It will feature twenty prose stories spanning from the distant past to the far future, real and fictive worlds, all while exploring new and unique manifestations of horror. Each story will also be accompanied by an original black and white illustration by a unique artist. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR: Original manifestations of horror, dread, grief, fear, and anxiety. Embodiments of mania and displacements of faith. Harrowing ecstasy and debilitating hope. Consuming, relentless love. Transgressions of the body, the spirit, and the community. Quiet, creeping absurdities. Unique and terrifying alien mythology from the future. Weird and unsettling folklore from secondary worlds. Quiet contemporary techno-panic. If that sounds broad, that’s because it is: our tastes run wide wide. We want to see stories written from places of boldness and tenderness. Stories that nauseate or introduce the smallest of psychic itches. Stories that span interstellar time or small, restrained fragments. Mixes of other genres (speculative, contemporary, “literary”, historical, etc) are great, but horror should be the focus. A few writers with the vibe we enjoy: Tananarive Due, Helen Oyeymi, Kazuo Umezu, Augustina Bazterrica, Brian Evenson, Yoko Ogawa, Nathan Ballingrund, Carmen Maria Machado, Toni Morrison, Richard Van Camp, Octavia Butler, Stephen Graham Jones, Samuel R Delaney, Junji Ito WHAT WE DON'T WANT: Overused tropes and story shapes.Didactic, fable-like stories.Generic or “classic”...

Deadline: November 1st, 2021 Payment: $.02 per word and a contributors copy Theme: Optimistic views of the future SOLARPUNK SUNSCAPES: OPTIMISTIC VISIONS OF THE FUTURE Story Length: 500 to 7,500 words Story Payment: $.02 per word + contributor copy Poem Length: 5 poems or 5 pages Poetry Payment: $30 per poem + contributor copy Submissions Open: September 1 — November 1, 2021 Expected Publication: Summer 2022 Editor: Justine Norton-Kertson What is Solarpunk? Solarpunk is a subgenre of science fiction that developed as a reaction to cyberpunk, the decades long dominance of apocalyptic fiction, and a growing desire to tell, read, hear, and watch stories that provide solutions to the very real and potentially catastrophic challenges of climate change. Solarpunk tells optimistic and hopeful stories about future societies (near-future or distant) powered by renewable energy, and where nature and technology coexist in harmony rather than in conflict. This is a subgenre that’s about restoring the web of life that connects us all. It’s about a desire to protect all life, not just human life. It’s about the drive to embrace and empower life, and restore the planet. Solarpunk futures aren’t usually “perfect” utopias. Well sometimes they are, or at least really close — but not always, not even usually — and even when they come close they are still never without conflict and challenges. But they also are absolutely not dystopias. A perfect utopia will never be achieved. However, if solarpunk societies haven’t yet reached some sort of utopian ideal, then the communities in solarpunk stories have still either solved, or are at least in the process of optimistically working together to solve or adapt to the climate crisis. They are consciously and collectively working to create a better world that is ecologically sustainable and is also free from racism, patriarchy, greed and inequity, war, hunger, etc. In short,...

Deadline: November 1st, 2021 Payment: $0.01 per word Theme: DEVOUT: Martyrs, Cults, and Madness Last Girls Club Winter Issue Theme is DEVOUT: Martyrs, Cults, and Madness No more than two fiction or flash fiction stories per author per submission period. Fiction is limited to 2,500 words or less. Authors are paid $0.01 per word upon acceptance ($25 USD max). Flash fiction is limited to under 1,000 words. Authors are paid $0.01 per word upon acceptance ($10 USD max). No more than three poems per poet. Poems are limited to 200 words or less for each poem. Poets are paid $10 upon acceptance. I prefer to use PayPal to pay authors, but will work with authors where PayPal is not available. Nonfiction columns will must be pitched to editor in chief before submission. Email your idea to [email protected] The Last Girls Club The Last Girls Club Magazine is a quarterly feminist horror magazine that publishes international short stories and poems from the female gaze. It is an homage to the scary comics and zines of the late 20th century. Please check on the website for the theme in detail. Submissions will be accepted from Jan 1-Feb 1, April 1-May 1, July 1-Aug 1, Oct 1-Nov 1. Final notifications will be Feb 15, May 15, Aug 15, Nov 15. No more than two fiction stories per author per submission period. Fiction is limited to 2,500 words or less. Flash fiction must be under 1,000 words, no more than two from an author. No more than three poems per poet. Poems are limited to 200 words or less for each poem. I prefer to use PayPal to pay authors, but will work with authors where PayPal is not available. Nonfiction columns will must be pitched to editor in chief before submission. Email your idea to [email protected] Via:...

Deadline: November 1st, 2021 Payment: 1,000 USD + 2 trade paperback copies Theme: Dark Fiction Note: Author must self-identify as an Indigenous person and must not have more than two published books Are you ready to be un-settled? Never Whistle At Night, edited by Shane Hawk and Ted Van Alst, is an anthology exclusive to Indigenous creatives and will be published by Penguin Random House in 2023. The anthology will comprise of twenty-one dark fiction short stories and a foreword by Stephen Graham Jones. Approximately seven stories are reserved for lesser-known and up-and-coming authors who will be selected through this open call. Our mission is to spread both new and established Indigenous authors and their work to as many readers as possible. The time is ripe to publish an Indigenous dark fiction anthology. Authors of historically excluded communities often float toward dark fiction to tell their stories because of its ability to effectively address social issues. Now it’s our turn. CURRENT CONTRIBUTORS Cherie Dimaline Kelli Jo Ford Owl Goingback Shane Hawk Brandon Hobson Stephen Graham Jones Darcie Little Badger Tommy Orange Mona Susan Power Waubgeshig Rice Rebecca Roanhorse Andrea L. Rogers Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr. David Heska Wanbli Weiden Erika T. Wurth ELIGIBILITY FOR OPEN CALL Author must self-identify as an Indigenous person Author must submit an original, unpublished work Author must not have more than two published books SUBMISSION DETAILS AND PROCEDURES We are not restricting authors to a specific theme aside from an adherence to the umbrella term of dark fiction. We expect to see stories with dark elements from all subgenres of horror, dark fantasy, dark science fiction, and gritty crime. Again, we are looking for original, unpublished work. No simultaneous submissions, please. Shane and Ted will be working alongside two open-call readers to judge submissions. To ensure...