Events

Deadline: April 15th, 2025 Payment: Fiction: 2¢ per word for original, 1¢ per word for reprints. Poetry: $20 per original poem and $10 for reprints. Artwork: $100 for issue cover art, $30 for back cover art, and $20 for art used on our site Theme: Stories and poetry containing elements of science fiction, anarchism, transhumanism, or dystopia. Note: Reprints Welcome Radon welcomes short stories and poetry containing elements of science fiction, anarchism, transhumanism, or dystopia. ​ We publish quality literature every mid-January, May, and September. Submissions are accepted year-round. Simultaneous submissions are welcome. Reprints accepted if writer has the rights. AI submissions are not allowed at Radon. ​ Please click below to submit your work through our no-fee Submittable page: SUBMIT We kindly request a third-person bio that is 100-words or shorter in your cover letter.Author rights: For original work, Radon asks for first worldwide digital and print publication rights in English and non-exclusive archival rights. ​ Authors published in Radon cannot be accepted into the issue immediately following, but may submit after this period. ​ Our issue reading periods are: ​January: Aug. 16 - Dec. 15 May: Dec. 16 - April 15 September: April 16 - Aug. 15 Prose We accept flash fiction and short story submissions up to 3,000 words. Radon pays a semi-professional rate of 2¢ per word for original work and 1¢ for reprints. For quicker processing, please use a submission style similar to the modern manuscript format. We ask that you utilize single-spacing. Please note that we do not publish fantasy stories and are looking for work that includes leftist social commentary. Poetry Please submit up to five poems in a single Word document. There is no line limit. Radon pays a semi-professional rate of $20 per original poem and $10 for reprints.We request single-spaced formatting using a standard 11pt font such as Garamond, Times New...

Deadline: April 15th, 2025 Payment: $20 per story or artwork Theme: Electric Spec prefers science fiction, fantasy, and the macabre, but we're willing to push the limits of traditional forms of these genres. Fiction Submission Guidelinessubmissions at electricspec (dot) comIssues are published at the end of February, May, August, and November. We reserve the right to shift publication date slightly, as necessary. We have reading periods for each issue, though we never close to submissions. February closes January 15 May closes April 15 August closes July 15 November closes October 15 We do not consider stories or art created, or partially created, by A.I. We consider stories between 250 and 7000 words with speculative fiction elements. We prefer science fiction, fantasy, and the macabre, but we're willing to push the limits of traditional forms of these genres. We do not consider poetry, stories with over-the-top sex or violence, serials, novels, fan fiction, or non-fiction. We don't accept multiple submissions; in other words, only submit one story at a time and wait for a response before submitting another. We accept simultaneous submissions as long as you let us know up front and tell us as soon as it's accepted elsewhere. We do not publish reprints, including anything that has appeared on a website. We pay $20 for each story we publish. We buy first-printing world exclusive rights for four months. Payment will be made shortly after publication using PayPal. We encourage our authors to establish a PayPal account if they don't already have one. We prefer to read submissions in traditional manuscript format. This means indented paragraphs instead of left justification, and Courier or Times New Roman font in 12 pt, double-spaced. Also, please include the title, your name, address, and word length on the first page of your story. To submit your story...

Submission Window: March 15th - 21st for POC, March 22nd - April 15th is open to all Payment: 3 cents per word Theme: Speculative Fiction in the science fiction or fantasy variety We are open annually for submissions from March 15th through April 15th for our August issue, and from September 15th through October 15th for our February issue. The first week of submissions (March 15-21 and Sept 15-21) is reserved for writers of color. The remainder of the window will be for general submissions. If you’re a writer of color who submits during that first week and you hear back from us before the general window closes, you’re welcome to send a second submission during that time. We are not interested in machine-generated (AI/LLM) characters, plots, or text of any kind. Spellcheckers and grammar checkers that run off machine learning are absolutely fine by us (though we also don’t want you to let a machine strip out your natural writing voice in the name of someone else’s idealized grammar!) HOW TO SUBMIT SUBMIT YOUR STORIES HERE WHAT TO SUBMIT The short version: We pay $0.03 per word with a minimum of $20 in exchange for first world electronic rights in English. We ask for an exclusivity period of 3 months from date of publication. Maximum 5,000 words. Your story must contain speculative elements: that means science fiction or fantasy. We do not accept nonfiction. No simultaneous submissions. Only one submission per writer per open period. We aim to make our final decisions within a month and a half of the close of submissions (i.e. by May 31st for the spring period, and by November 30th for the fall period). You will often receive a response much sooner. If you haven’t heard from us by that time, please query at the above address. The...

Submission Window: April 1st - 15th, 2025 Payment: Short Story-2,500 words or less. $0.015 USD per word/$37.50 USD max, Poems-less than 200 words $10, Flash Fiction-less than a 1,000 words $0.015 USD per word/$15 USD max Theme: A pro-feminist story with the idea of "For Your Own Good" 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. This season's theme is For Your Own Good. This phrase should make your skin crawl. Anything done for your own good means your self autonomy has been compromised. Is it the government The church? Your family? What have they done or taken away. Make us wince in sympathy. No more than two fiction stories per author per submission period. Fiction is limited to 2,500 words or less. Authors are paid $0.015 USD per word upon acceptance ($37.50 USD max). Flash fiction is limited to under 1,000 words. Authors are paid $0.015 USD per word upon acceptance ($15 USD max). No more than three poems per poet. Poems are limited to 200 words or less for each poem. Poets are paid $10 USD 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 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 1-15, April 1-15, July 1-15, Oct...

Deadline: April 15th, 2025 Payment: $10 per story or 1 cent/word rounded to the nearest 100 words, up to a maximum of $25. Theme: Speculative Fiction up to 2500 words We are current open to submissions. We will be open for admissions for the Summer, 2025 issue until April 15, 2025. Please do not query prior to March 3. Our general guidlines for submission remain unchanged. Our primary mission is to provide readers with speculative fiction, broadly defined. We like character-driven stories that take us to the boundary where imagination and reality collide. If in doubt, please submit your story. We will enjoy reading it, even if it doesn’t quite fit with our mission. We prefer stories between 1000 and 2500 words. If your story is longer than 2500 words, please do not use the submission form on this website. Instead, use the separate query submission form. We welcome submissions from under-represented groups who bring their lived experience to their fiction. We also welcome submissions from first-time, unpublished authors. We welcome submissions from any location. However, our mission includes providing a market for authors from the region of the Crosstimbers Forest–which includes Oklahoma and surrounding states–so we especially encourage authors from this region to submit. Please do not send mulitiple submissions, simultaneous submissions, or previously published stories. If considered for publication, we will ask authors to disclose the extent, if any, to which they have used generative AI in their stories. Payment will be the larger of $10 per story or 1 cent/word rounded to the nearest 100 words, up to a maximum of $50. Payment will be rendered via Paypal at the time of publication. We cannot issue checks or pay in cash–you must be able to accept Paypal to be paid. If you cannot accept Paypal, payment will be in the form of a copy...

Deadline: April 15th, 2025 Payment: 2 cents per word Theme: Anything witch-related! Modern day, fairy-tale, and anywhere inbetween! Graveside Press’s next themed anthology will be WITCHCRAFT! Open for Submissions: March 1, 2025 through April 15, 2025 Expected Publication: December 2025 What Are We Looking For? WITCHES! Obviously. Whether you’re going with modern-day witchcraft practices or the fairy-tale evil witch, we’re ready for you. Submissions Requirements Your story: should be approximately 2,000 – 6,000 words in length. central focus: witchcraft of some sort. any character involved in adult activities must be 18+. NO: non-consensual, rape, or other sexual assault STANDARD PAY RATES Standalone works (novels, novellas, short stories "Tiny Terrors") - 50% royalties of net earnings paid quarterly Anthology submissions - 2¢ per word to be paid 90 business days after publication Illustrations - $75 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES When submitting, please do not send your manuscript already formatted as a book with fancy chapter headers, fonts, margins, etc. We would greatly appreciate if you can follow the formatting guidelines below: file type: *.doc or *.docx Font: Any legible serif, e.g., Times New Roman, Garamond Include author information at the top of page 1 (see sample below) Use formatted indents and not tabs to begin each paragraph Use hard returns to start new paragraphs Use page breaks to begin chapters on a new page If you would like an example of what a properly formatted manuscript looks like or need help with any of the above, check here. When in doubt, just remember we want your MS as clean and readable as possible! Via: Graveside Press.

Submission Window: March 17th - April 16th, 2025 Payment: 1 cent per word Theme: NSFW jungle adventure Jungle Scandals is the second entry in The Scandal Anthology Series and the follow-up to the smash hit Sword & Scandal. But where Sword & Scandal featured NSFW heroic fantasy, Jungle Scandals is all about NSFW jungle adventure. That’s right! This time around, we're touring the jungles of the world, taking stops in Africa, Indonesia, and the Amazon, and we'll be taking our inspiration from the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jospeh Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, and H. Rider Haggard. But, while those writers all had more or less Victorian sensibilities, we'll be filling the pages of our book with more gratuitous nudity, sex, and gore than you can possibly imagine! Some today find the old writers problematic. We think they're not nearly problematic enough! These stories will retain the sense of fun and wonder from the jungle adventures of old. But they will be absolutely insane with all the sex! If you read Sword & Scandal, then you know we don't hold anything back. We are looking for experimental stories that take big risks. Unlike other publishers who tend to play it safe with their selections, we are seeking the wild, strange, and outrageous. So, if you have an off-beat or off-the-wall jungle adventure rattling around in your head, but which you’ve been afraid to write because you don't think you can place it, now is the time! We believe that literature should be dangerous, and we want to provide you with a safe space to write unsafe fiction. Humor is also a big part of what we do. We are actively looking for stories that incorporate a similar sense of humor as ours: dry, sardonic, and satirical. But any type of humor is...

Submission Window: April 2nd - 16th, 2025 Payment: $15.00 CAD and a contributors copy Theme: Ghosts in Canada Note: Canadian authors only Submissions open April 02 - 16 Canadians! We want your strange, unsettling, spooky tales featuring a ghost of one kind or another  - open to your interpretation. From the Atlantic to the Pacific and anywhere in between...from our southern border up to the Arctic Ocean - from coast, to coast to coast, bring us your ghosts.   Original stories only - written by you, not previously published. Set in Canada, written by Canadian authors. 500 - 1500 words. (The submission portal will show 2 categories: flash fiction 500-1000 words, and short stories 1000-1500 words)   Please only submit one story Simultaneous submissions are fine, please withdraw your story if accepted elsewhere.     NO AI: we do not want to publish work written in whole, in part, or assisted by artificial intelligence. We want to publish your words, not machine-genterated words, which, by the way, are taken from other authors' work - that is how these 'programs' are trained. So no, no thank you. Even though we are fans of a wide range of dark fiction and horror, this is not the place for extreme horror, ultra-violence or erotica. We also will not publish work that contains animal cruelty, child abuse, sexual assault, graphic or explicit sexual content, extreme horror, anything pro-ageism, pro-bigotry, hatred or prejudice toward any group or demographic, or country.   COMPENSATION: $15.00 (fifteen) CAD + print copy Payment is in Canadian dollars, paid via eTransfer. Contributors will also receive a print copy, understanding that final page count will determine if this will be a Zine; low-fi, saddle-stitched (stapled), or a perfect bound thin book. In either case, the size is planned to be 5.5" x 8.5".   RIGHTS: If your story is selected,...

Submission Window: March 20th - April 20th, 2025 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 Please read below for details about our next submission window, guidelines, honorariums, and rights. 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 We pay a $50 honorarium upon publication of one or more pieces from your submission. We open for submissions on the day we publish new work and remain open for a month, or until we reach 150 submissions. Here are our next open submission periods: Here are the next free periods: March 20 - April 20, 2025 June 20 - July 20, 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...

Submission Window: February 1st - April 30th, 2025 Payment: $20 Theme: Speculative fiction that takes place in the Shenandoah Valley (defined as the Virginia counties of Augusta, Clarke, Frederick, Page, Rockbridge, Rockingham, Shenandoah, and Warren; the West Virginia counties of Berkeley and Jefferson; the independent cities of Harrisonburg, Lexington, Staunton, Waynesboro, and Winchester; The Shenandoah National Park; The George Washington National Forest.) What We Want: Shenandoah Valley Fantastic seeks strange and wondrous speculative fiction that transforms our beloved region into a realm of mystery, magic, and the unexpected. From witches haunting Winchester’s historic alleys to spectral happenings on the Field of Lost Shoes, we invite you to re-imagine the Valley’s rich landscapes and legends. Envision Shenandoah National Park as a forbidden, fey-infused forest, where wayward travelers encounter creatures older than the hills. What if Duke Dog Alley were a portal to another world? Suppose Cooter’s become a crossroad for supernatural beings—a place where ghosts and wanderers alike grab a bite before moving on to unknown realms. Picture the storied halls of Washington & Lee as a secret training ground for the next generation of spellcasters, with campus traditions hiding dark rites and hidden powers. Let your imagination run wild with stories that blend the supernatural with our natural splendor. We welcome tales of magic and mystery, terror and transformation—grounded in the historic sites, natural wonders, and quirky landmarks that make the Shenandoah Valley unforgettable. If your story will make readers see the Valley in a new, eerie light, we want to read it. What We Don’t Want:Your trunk stories with a couple of references to the Valley bolted on. Requirements: Stories must contain a speculative element (Fantasy, Horror or Science Fiction) and take place in Shenandoah Valley, defined as the Virginia counties of Augusta, Clarke, Frederick, Page, Rockbridge, Rockingham, Shenandoah, and Warren;...