These magazines and anthologies pay $50 to about $360 for fiction. A few also accept other genres, like non-fiction and poetry. Some calls are themed. – S. Kalekar
Extra Teeth
This is a Scottish magazine and they also take fiction submissions from around the world. “We look for short stories that stick with you, lingering in the memory long after reading, and essays that explore specific interests or issues from a new perspective. We offer a space for writers to be strange, bold and experimental, and to express their unique style however they see fit.” They open on 1st December – and though the deadline is not announced, in the past, their reading periods have been short.
Opens on: 1 December 2022; deadline not announced yet
Length: 800-4,000 words
Pay: £100
Details here.
The Woodward Review
This magazine is affiliated with Wayne State University. They are reading submissions for their second issue. They publish prose, poetry, art/hybrid/digital media, as well as reviews & responses. They have detailed guidelines about what they’re looking for in each genre.
Deadline: 1 December 2022
Length: Up to 5,000 words for prose
Pay: $50
Details here.
Crystal Lake Publishing: Never Wake Anthology
For this anthology, they want “scary, mind-bending stories featuring dreams, nightmares, hallucinations, messed-up psychedelic experiences, and various elements of phantasmagoria. Think sleep experiments gone awry and Freddy Krueger and “This is bat country!” from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but maybe the bats are real and maybe they are vampires? Feel free to bring the weird, the trippy, and the surreal in large doses.”
Deadline: 4 December 2022
Length: 2,500-4,500 words
Pay: $0.08/word
Details here (download the guidelines for the ‘Never Wake’ anthology from here.)
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly
This magazine is open for submissions of heroic fantasy – sword & sorcery stories and poetry.
Deadline: 7 December 2022
Length: Up to 10,000 words, or can serialize up to 50,000 words for fiction; up to three poems
Pay: $25-100 for fiction, $12.5-25 for poems
Details here.
Funicular
This Canadian magazine publishes “quality fiction and poetry that shocks, surprises, moves, and tickles us. Maybe all of those things in a single piece.” They primarily publish Canadian writers, and also publish international writers. Pieces selected for online publication only are unpaid.
Deadline: 9 December 2022
Length: Up to 3,000 words for fiction (or up to 3 flash pieces, 1,000 words each), up to 3 poems
Pay: CAD25/poem and flash piece, CAD10/page for short fiction, up to CAD100
Details here.
The Alchemy Press Book of the Unknown
This is a fiction anthology. “We are looking for dark fantasy stories set in the real world (preferably the modern one, but we are flexible) which take an askance view of life. Tales which twist reality. Tales which alter a life (or many lives) forever – for good or ill, and in the strangest way. With a hint of horror. We do not want sword and sorcery, heroic fantasies, quest fantasies. We do not want stories set in out-and-out SF worlds, planets, or spaceships. We do not want stories that focus on horror – and certainly nothing intended to gross out the reader. No psychopathic killers. And no proselytising religious tales, whether metaphorical or not.”
Deadline: 14 December 2022
Length: 3,000-7,000 words (see guidelines)
Pay: £0.01/word
Details here.
Neon Hemlock Press: Baffling Magazine – Performance
They want speculative fiction with a queer bent; submissions are open to all. They will read on the ‘Performance’ theme, as well as unthemed stories.
Reading period: 1-15 December 2022
Length: Up to 1,200 words
Pay: $0.08/word
Details here.
(Neon Hemlock is also open for a couple of anthologies, We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction, a reprint anthology, and The Crawling Moon: Queer Tales of Inescapable Dread; details here.)
Matter Press: The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts
They publish fiction and creative nonfiction, as well as prose poetry in both genres, as long as it is compressed in some way. Writers can send up to three pieces per reading period.
Deadline: 15 December 2022
Length: Up to 600 words
Pay: $50
Details here and here.
The Cincinnati Review
This prestigious literary magazine accepts prose (fiction and creative non-fiction), poetry, translation submissions, and drama queries, for the print magazine from beginning till end-December, or until filled – see the editor preferences here. Online features are accepted almost through the year.
Reading period: 1-31 December 2022, or until filled, for print magazine
Length: Up to 40 double-spaced pages for fiction, up to 20 pages for nonfiction, up to 5 poems
Pay: $25/page for prose and $30/page for poetry for print, $25 for online features
Details here.
Workers Write: Tales from the Club
They want stories and poems from nightclubs, discotheques, cabarets, pubs, or any nightlife spot. “We’re looking for fiction and poetry about club/bar owners, managers, bartenders and barbacks, servers, bouncers, promoters, and entertainers (comedians, DJs, strippers), anyone who makes money in a club or bar.
One more thing: We’d like to see submissions about nightlife jobs from different eras.”
Deadline: 31 December 2022, or until filled
Length: 500-5,000 words
Pay: $5-50
Details here.
Amazing Stories – Sol System
They are reading fiction for a special Sol System edition. “We are interested in stories set in the future and revolving around Sol, including planets, moons, asteroids, Oort and Kuiper, you name it!”
Deadline: 2 January 2022
Length: Up to 1,500 words
Pay: $0.08/word
Details here.
Ninth Letter
This literary magazine publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. They do not charge a submission fee for electronic submissions (via Submittable) for their print magazine during November and December. They charge for online submissions during other times, but postal submissions are fee-free for the entire reading period, until 28 February 2023.
Deadline: See above
Length: Up to 3 poems; up to 8,000 words for prose
Pay: $25/page, up to $150
Details here.
Bio: S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She can be reached here.
