S. Kalekar

These magazines and anthologies pay for fiction. Many also accept other genres, like non-fiction and poetry. Some calls are themed. They’re open now, or will open soon.

Electric Lit: The Commuter
They accept flash prose (send one or more pieces, can be stand-alone or interconnected, with total length up to 1,500 words), poems (up to 3 poems), and graphic narrative for The Commuter section.
Deadline: 21 September 2025, or until their submission cap is reached
Length: See above 
Pay: $100
Details here and here.

Strange Pilgrims
This is a new Substack-based magazine, and they will open their first reading period soon, for fiction and non-fiction. “We’re not married to any genre, structure, or subject. We love surreal, speculative, and fabulist stories; unhinged, lyric, and fragmented essays; voice-driven experimental narratives and slow-burn realism; cultural and literary criticism; hyper-intellectual riffs and children’s stories — so long as they move. If your work is honest, well-crafted, and offers something emotionally and intellectually vivid, we want to read it.” You can read more about them, as well as their likes and influences, here. They will publish one piece each week, alternating between flash and long-form. Their submission portal will open during the reading period.
Opens on: 21 September 2025
Length: Up to 1,000 words for flash, up to 5,000 words for short prose
Pay: $50 for flash prose, $200 for longer works
Details here and here.

Reckoning X: Communication
They publish work on environmental justice, and for their 10^th issue, they’re reading submissions broadly around the Communication theme. “What brought us to this? How do those of us who grasp the direness of our situation—as a species, as a global community—convey or fail to convey that to others? These are dauntingly complex questions, and it’s clear the familiar solutions fall catastrophically short. Show us new answers, new framings. Reach for the weird tools, the neglected ones. Show us how journalism should work. Tell us stories about stories. Illuminate the economic structures behind our educational institutions and the walls against understanding that dog our international borders. Interpret the data for us, then interpret the interpreters. Let’s crack open the ways knowledge is produced and spread amid late-stage capitalism.
We’re seeking art, poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction … in particular from Indigenous, Black, Brown, queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent and/or otherwise marginalized writers and artists from everywhere.” 
Deadline: 22 September 2025
Length: Up to 15,000 words for prose, up to 10 pages for poetry
Pay: $0.10/word for prose, $50/poem
Details here and here.

Cutleaf: Collaborative short fiction
“Cutleaf seeks fiction submissions from writers who’ve completed a short story written in a collaborative spirit with another person. This idea of a collaborative spirit extends beyond a proofreader or editor. At its core, the collaboration must be an equally shared endeavor that results in a short story. This, in other words, is a co-written or jointly written short story.”
Deadline: 30 September 2025
Length: Up to 4,000 words preferred
Pay: $100-300
Details here and here.
(Cutleaf is also open for nonfiction, and will stay open for that until a submission cap is met; see here and here.)

Nashville Review: Kink & Culture
They are accepting fiction, non-fiction, translations, comics, and also have a Featured Artist section. Poetry submissions are closed. They have detailed guidelines on the Kink & Culture theme, including, “The idea for Kink and Culture did not arrive to me as theory first, but through a certain embodied friction: a ghazal layered over electronic basslines on a warm Nashville night, a Bombay sandwich served in a café thousands of miles from where it was born. Both moments were translations—familiar yet not quite. That’s what kink and culture share: they thrive in the spaces where memory collides with invention, where desire remakes tradition into something subversive and new. … Consider this your permission to push against boundaries—of genre, of body, of expectation. Send us fiction with tension and truth. Play with length – write micro, flash, short story, and longer short story. Play with genre, form, and content. Send us non-fiction essays that unpack the historical, political, and personal. … Send us translations, hybrid work, music, and visual art that give permission to not just your own voice, but also of those who come after you.” Nashville Review is affiliated with Vanderbilt University.
Deadline: Until filled for fiction; 30 September 2025 for other genres
Length: Up to 7,000 words for fiction, up to 8,000 words for non-fiction
Pay: $100 for prose and art
Details here and here.

(Another prestigious literary magazine affiliated with a college is also open for submissions: The Kenyon Review is accepting unthemed as well as themed submissions of fiction (including flash), non-fiction, and poetry on these four themes: Alchemy – The NOPE Dossier; Invisible Cities; Precarity; and Document (Previously: Who Gets to Be American?). Please see guidelines for details on the themes. They also accept excerpts from larger works, as well as translations. Send up to 7,500 words for prose, up to 6 poems, up to 30 pages for excerpts. They pay $0.08/word for prose up to $450, $0.16/word for poetry up to $200. The deadline is 30 September 2025; details here.) 

Trollbreath Magazine
They want speculative fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. “Our interests are as varied as the endless amount of genres, from dark fantasy to hope punk to surrealism, and everything in between. We have a particular fondness for slipstream and fabulism in all their delightful forms, but what motivates us most are great stories by wonderful authors eager to share their visions of the past, the future, the in between, and everything that lies outside the margins. Coloring beyond the lines encouraged.” They also accept fiction reprints and translations, as well as artwork. Submission is via a form.
Deadline: 30 September 2025
Length: 1,500-7,500 words for fiction (prefer 4,000-5,000 words), up to 2,500 words for non-fiction, up to 5 poems
Pay: $0.04/word for original fiction, $40 for non-fiction, $25 for poetry
Details here and here.

Inked in Gray: In the Words of a Flower Anthology
They want upper YA and adult fantasy (both high and low fantasy) for this anthology. “All stories should incorporate an aspect of floriography, the language of flowers.” And, “Please give us diversity! Mental health rep! Fat rep! Visible and invisible disabilities!”
Deadline: 30 September 2025
Length: 2,000-7,000 words
Pay: $50
Details here.
 
Manawaker Studios: Home Constellations Anthology
They want fiction, poetry, and art for this anthology. They want stories about the future which feature non-traditional families. They have detailed guidelines, including, “Submitted works should be of any genre, as long as the work depicts a world that is noticeably in the future. Hard and Soft Sci-fi, (Post-)apocalyptic, Solarpunk, Slipstream, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Alternate (future) History, Supernatural, Retro-futurism etc. are all fine names for genres that often take place in the future, but your story doesn’t have to fit into one of those. In fact, if it manages to miss all of those labels, we may be even more interested to see it”. They also accept graphic narrative fiction, as well as reprints.
Deadline: 30 September 2025
Length: Up to 3 poems; no length restrictions for fiction
Pay: 5$ + 1c/word over 500 (up to 5k) words + .2c/word over 5k words (see guidelines)
Details here. The Paris Review
They will open for prose and poetry on 1^st October. They also welcome translations. They will accept submissions by Submittable until their cap is reached, and also hard-copy submissions postmarked till end-October.
Opens on: 1^st October 2025
Length: Up to 6 poems; unspecified for prose
Pay: Unspecified
Details here.

Short Story, Long
They are open for fiction submissions. Each story will be paired with original artwork.
Deadline: 1 October 2025
Length: 2,000-8,000 words (3,000-5,500 words preferred)
Pay: $100
Details here.

Flame Tree: Wars in the Stars Short Stories
For this fiction anthology, they want “Sci-fi on an epic scale, battles fought across galaxies, complex political intrigue against the backdrop of interstellar empires and dominions, all the while affecting the lives of characters with familiar loves, lives, worries, drama.
We’re seeking space stories that burst with imagination at the same time as solid world-building, high-stake conflict, inventive advanced technologies, relatable storylines and unique beings, and vibrate with the sense of awe and possibility that the wonder of the universe inspires.” They also accept reprints.
Deadline: 1 October 2025
Length: 2,000–4,000 words
Pay: $0.08/word for originals
Details here.
(Flame Tree often issues calls for fiction anthologies, which they announce on this blog. A couple of deadlines are in September: Folklore & Horror Short Stories, deadline 26^th September; Christmas Ghosts Short Stories, deadline 28^th September 2025; other calls are open too, with later deadlines.)

Tractor Beam
They publish soilpunk fiction and graphic fiction. “For our upcoming issues, we’re specifically seeking stories exploring a positive future on Earth with an emphasis on soil and agriculture in the winter, the productive role of ice and snow in the seasons, frost and permafrost, future fashion and style, entertainment and culture, the ocean and soil under water, soil as tech, soil as the origin of life and anti-apocalyptic futures. Literal or abstract, near term or on distant horizons: worlds can take inspiration from innovations or alternative practices in earth and material science, regenerative agriculture, food, microbiology, and more.”
Deadline: 6^th October 2025
Length: Up to 6,000 words
Pay: $1,000
Details here and here.

Cold Caller Mag
Cold Caller is a new Substack-based magazine; it is “a publisher of crime and mystery fiction, and we define those terms broadly. We’re looking for stories of bad decisions and worse consequences; unlucky losers who can’t catch a break; grifters and con men convinced they’re about to score big; good men and women who have very good reasons to do terrible things.” They’ve given a list of stories, as well as TV shows and movies, that match their vibe (see guidelines). And, “We lean toward noir and realism, so generally speaking we aren’t looking for cozy mysteries, spy thrillers, or for cross-genre work such as mystery-romance, mystery-science fiction, mystery-fantasy, etc.”
Deadline: Open now
Length: Up to 10,000 words (prefers 2,000-6,000 words)
Pay: $125
Details here.

Gutter Magazine
Gutter is a Scotland-based magazine “of new Scottish and international writing. During our two annual submission windows, we accept poetry, fiction and essays from writers in Scotland and beyond. 
We look for work that challenges, re-imagines or undermines the status quo, work that pushes at the boundaries of form and function, work that is striking and beautiful. We believe that great writing transcends boundaries, and we reject any distinction between literary and genre, high art and popular culture.”
Deadline: Open now
Length: Up to 2,500 words for prose, up to 3 poems
Pay: £50
Details here and here

Bio: S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She can be reached here.