Events

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Payment: 15GBP Theme: Found Footage (Vol 105) FOUND FOOTAGE, 1st December 2024 Bring us stories from lost tapes, forgotten diaries, old film, banned video games, or wherever else you might find strange echoes in lost media. 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. *** WHEN WILL I HEAR IF MY STORY HAS BEEN ACCEPTED OR NOT? We carefully review every single submission that comes through our door. If you’ve submitted a story to us, please be patient. We WILL let you know if your submission has or hasn’t been successful. Having said that, if you haven’t heard anything up to twelve weeks after the deadline has passed, feel free to ping us an email to check in on it. Submission Guidelines • 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 to us, you are confirming that you are the original creator of the story • We will consider entrants whose work has been entered and published elsewhere, however please ensure you state where and when your story has been used elsewhere on the document • You will be allowed to place one call-to-action for your own work at...

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Payment: $50 Theme: Writing that attempts to salvage something pure from the collision of warmth and cold, that says what it can about the world it finds itself in. Schedule We publish two issues a year, September 1 and March 1. We accept general submissions for poetry, nonfiction, and fiction between two reading periods, and the first 300 submissions to each are free. We also run a collaborative writing contest in August. We also accept visual art all year. General Submissions: March 1 – May 1 General Submissions: October 1 – December 1 Collaboration Contest: July 15 –  August 31 Payment We are thrilled to finally be able to say that, starting with issue 17, we will be able to offer our contributors a small payment of $50 upon publication. A Note on Our Aesthetic We believe there is beauty in scars on smooth skin, in the small fissures where things begin to break apart. Sundogs are not the sun itself but phantom stars appearing on the horizon, illusions produced by the play of the sun’s heat with crystals of ice. They shed their light all the same. Many are tinged with color. We look for this same quality in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. We want writing that attempts to salvage something pure from the collision of warmth and cold, that says what it can about the world it finds itself in. We seek a diversity of voices speaking from visceral, lived experience. We like truth we can stare at until our eyes water, words so carefully chosen we want to reread them as soon as we have finished. Practical Matters We are grateful to be a part of a literary community that is taking action against systemic racism. We will also be donating submission fees from our current...

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Payment: $.08 per word up to 1,000 words; $.01 per word for longer submissions; $50 flat rate for poems, essays, articles and reviews. Theme: Speculative Fiction of Caribbean Pantheology (see description below) by Caribbean people or anyone with ancestral or migratory ties to the region OD Ekpeki Presents is accepting submissions of fiction, poetry, essays, articles and reviews till December 2024 for The Passage To Caribbean Pantheology, a speculative fiction anthology, edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Tonya Liburd, E.G. Condé and Fabrice Guerrier. Publication date is in 2025. The anthology will be co-published by OD Ekpeki Presents and MV Media, run by Milton Davis. Call: We define Caribbean Pantheology as stories spoken, sung, or written that evoke the wonder, horror, and joy of the Caribbean experience. Caribbean Pantheology will receive, read, translate and publish stories in all varieties of English (including Creole and Spanglish), Spanish, and French that engage with the diverse spiritual traditions of creators living in the Caribbean or its many diasporas. Between myth and legend, the fantastical and the speculative, the supernatural and the real, we seek stories that defy genre boundaries (fantasy, magical realism, surreal, the weird, speculative, science fiction) and the colonial borders that have long divided our islands into “Anglophone”, “Francophone”, and “Hispanophone” communities. Like the Caribbean, our pantheology is a meshwork of continents, deities, and languages, forged in the violence of colonialism, chattel slavery, and indentured labor. More than our scars, we Caribbean people are foundries of creativity and revolution. Like the maroon refuges built by our ancestors, we are spun from Indigenous (Garifuna, Guanahatabey, Kalinago, Taíno), African, Asian, and European traces. As such, we welcome stories that confront the spiritual wounds of our pasts, celebrate the rich traditions of our present, and imagine our flourishing futures. Send us your archipelagic tales of Soucouyants...

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Payment: $1,500 USD and a contributors copy Theme: Horror from emerging North American Indigenous writers Never Whistle at Night, Part II: Back for Blood invites emerging Indigenous writers to submit their horror stories for the sequel to the international bestseller. This next anthology, featuring 20+ terrifying tales, focuses exclusively on horror and continues our mission of creating opportunities for Indigenous voices. About half of the stories will come from this open call, while the other half will be contributed by established names: some of whom aren't typically known for horror or even conventional narrative writing. Published by Vintage Books in the US and McClelland & Stewart and Random House Canada up north, this collection will explore the dark and haunting dimensions of Indigenous cultures across North America. Part II has an expected release of Fall 2026. Submission Window: September 1 at 9am Pacific to December 1 at 11:59pm Pacific. (Please check your local time. This is a hard deadline. No exceptions.) Submission Guidelines for Never Whistle at Night, Part II   We are seeking boundary-pushing horror stories from Indigenous writers of North America. Our anthology aims to showcase fresh, original voices in Indigenous Horror, and we encourage submissions that explore new and innovative themes. To ensure your story stands out, we advise all open-call writers to review our first anthology, Never Whistle at Night, to avoid duplicating plots or themes that we’ve already published.   Eligibility Criteria: You must be an Indigenous person of North America. You must be an emerging writer. What does "emerging" mean for this specific anthology? A writer that has never been published. A writer that has only published short stories in magazines, anthologies, etc. A writer that has published no more than one novel or fiction collection through a traditional publisher by the time they submit. A traditional publisher is defined...

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Payment: $5 Theme: Fortune and Luck Winter Solstice 2024: Fortune and Luck. Submission Period: 1 November to 1 December 2024. Improbable events. Random associations, positive and negative. Is it chance or is it divine intervention? Send us your best poems, short stories, and essays about fortune and luck — good and bad — from a Pagan/polytheist, witchy, or mythological point of view. Send us poems about leprechauns, the Goddess Felicitas, the wheel of fortune, the cornucopia. Send us short stories about a man losing his luck to a cunning fae, the opening theme of Carmina Burana, the asteroid 19 Fortuna, and the wheel of fortune tarot card. Send us essays about the history of the four leaf clover, the adoption of feng shui in western interior design, and the evolution of the Goddess Fortuna into the medieval Lady Fortune. EHS is an ezine dedicated to 1) original poetry and 2) short fiction about the Gods and Goddesses and heroes of the world’s many Pagan/polytheist traditions. We feature 3) reviews of books, graphic novels, academic journals, magazines, movies, plays, and so forth which have a Pagan focus, or which otherwise might interest our Pagan readership. And 4) interviews with established and new Pagan authors, or authors of texts that interest a Pagan audience. And finally, 5) essays concerning the Gods, Goddesses, heroes, myths and folklore of the world. What do we mean by “original?” The submission must not have been previously published in hardcopy, or on another ezine, or website, or blog. Since people often discuss their writing on email lists and messageboards, we do not consider that previous publication. That is, if your poem or story or review has only appeared on email lists or messageboards, we still consider it original. Submission Guidelines We’re looking for hymns...

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Prizes: $50 for each of the 3 category winners, $35 for each piece accepted (Technically pro-rates with the word count.) Theme: Flash fiction of no more than 350 words that’s both about Christmas (or any other winter holiday) and simultaneously weird am not dead. Nor have I given up the contest. I’m just late. Very late. Months late. But that means that this year, I won’t be announcing the contest when it’s unbearably hot, even though now it’s unbearably hot all the way through September. Climate change and the threat of ever-increasing summer just means I’ll be happier when it finally comes time to die for real. At least death seems colder. Cooler, at least, than Chicago in September. But you don’t care about me. You care about weird Christmas stories! And that’s a good thing, so let’s get one step closer to them! This is indeed the SEVENTH year of doing my little conceived-with-no-forethought concept that continues to eat up my entire November and December, but which I’m still lovingly devoted to! And it’s time to get to the nitty gritty of this year’s seed-planting. This is a contest for flash fiction of no more than 350 words that’s both about Christmas (or any other winter holiday) and simultaneously weird. Exactly what that means is, of course, up to you because you’re the one with literary pretentions and a damaged psyche. All you have to do is make something about the Christmas season seem new and unsettling with a bit of that grinning like you’re not sure if it’s funny or creepy, and you make your fellow co-conspirators in this hell of existence a bit more bearable. I’m changing things up a bit this year. In the past, I’ve given out an overall winner, but...

Submission Window: December 1st - 2nd, 2024 Payment: 8 cents per word for original, 2 cents for reprints, For artwork: $10 for the non-exclusive right to use each image, for as long as the site is online.  If we publish a print collection we will pay a pro-rata share for each image used. Theme: Well written original work in science fiction, fantasy, myth, legend, fairy tales, and eldritch, in written, podcast, video, and/or graphic story form, and from around the world. Note: Reprints welcome     Submissions Schedule The first and second day of every month, 12 am of the 1st to 12 am of the 3rd, E.S.T. For reading impaired individuals, our submissions manager and ‘forget password’ have a captcha compatible with screen readers. We pay 8¢ per word for new fiction, 2¢ per word for fiction reprints, 2 – 8¢ per word for new fact-based work, 1- 4¢ per word for reprinted fact articles. For new poetry, we pay $1 per line, and for reprints we pay 50¢ a line  We’re looking for poems up to 40 lines. We’ll consider longer poems but that would be a hard sell, and words over 40 lines would be paid at 8¢ per word. We sponsor The Kepler Award to recognize and encourage writers of excellent science fiction and fantasy stories that creatively extrapolate on known science in constructive and exciting ways. You can learn aboutThe Kepler Award here. You can read a copy of our standard contract here.   It can be varied as needed to include the rights of translators, voice actors, etc. Writers Guidelines We accept new work as well as reprints, prose and poetry, from a minimum of 1000 words on up.   All else being equal, shorter pieces will be favored, and we have yet to find a story over about 9-10,000 words we...

Deadline: December 3rd, 2024 Payment: $40 for content published digitally, $100 for prose published in print, $50 for each poem published in print, and $100 per artwork published in print. Theme: Genre-bending & genre-blending stories Meetinghouse Magazine is in the process of soliciting writing for its fifth volume. We welcome all forms of writing, both creative and critical. Please see our submission policy and past online publications for guidance. We appreciate genre-bending & genre-blending. We believe trying and failing to work through difficult ideas and feelings is more worthwhile than staying comfortable in what you know. Asking questions is better than answering them. And we very badly want to be kind. Thank you for your interest in Meetinghouse and your commitment to maintaining the vibrancy of literary culture! All submissions will be considered for print and digital publication unless submitters request otherwise. the basics: We accept up to two pieces of prose, five poems, and five 2D artworks per submission. Please submit prose pieces as separate documents, poems in a single document, and visual pieces, including a list of works, in one document if possible. Please keep each submission under 7,500 words. Include a brief bio with your work. Please attach your submissions as a .doc, .docx, or .pdf. Artwork will also be accepted as .png and .jpg. On very rare occasions do we accept previously published work. Please let us know if that is the case with your piece. We accept simultaneous submissions, but please inform us if your work is accepted elsewhere. We publish work in translation. Translators are responsible for acquiring author and publisher permissions. Authors retain the copyright to their work. We accept work by both published and previously unpublished authors. We can offer you some money: $40 for content published digitally, $100 for prose published...

Submission Window: December 1st – 7th, 2024 Payment: Drabbles and Flash – £5, Short Stories 1001 to 4000 words – £10, Short Stories 4001 to 8000 words – £15 Theme: Stories you’ve poured your soul into but haven’t been able to find the right home for. We do not have set issue themes but feel free to be inspired by the season, seasonal occasions and events. Note: Only publishes creators from under represented and/or marginalized communities. WE ONLY PUBLISH CREATORS FROM UNDER REPRESENTED AND/OR MARGINALISED BACKGROUNDS AND/OR COMMUNITIES We don’t ask for any proof, we take this on trust with the expectation that anyone not from a marginalised background or underrepresented community wouldn’t take up the space of someone who is. We ask you to consider this before submitting. QUARTERLY ONLINE ANTHOLOGY: BRIEF We’re looking for stories you’ve poured your soul into but haven’t been able to find the right home for. We’re looking for stories that make us feel something. Warmth, love, melancholy, rage. We want it all. All genres, styles and themes will be considered and we especially love stories that are outside the box in their telling. Ambiguous endings? Non-linear storytelling? Antagonist’s point-of-view? A story told in just one scene? We love it all. PLEASE NOTE: We will close submissions early if our cut off point is reached Quarterly Online Anthology Submission Schedule: December 1st – 7th (Spring Issue) or until we reach 70 submissions March 1st – 7th (Summer Issue) or until we reach 70 submissions June 1st – 7th (Autumn Issue) or until we reach 70 submissions September 1st – 7th (Winter Issue) or until we reach 70 submissions ​We do not have set issue themes but feel free to be inspired by the season, seasonal occasions and events. We are unlikely to publish stories...

Submission Window: August 16th - December 15th, 2024 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: 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...