By S. Kalekar
These magazines pay up to $500 for fiction. Some of them also accept other genres, like non-fiction and poetry.
carte blanche
They want fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, translations (French to English only), photography, and comics for their upcoming issue (no. 53). They have a submission cap on poetry, so that may close earlier than the deadline. They welcome and encourage submissions from racialized and marginalized writers. While they accept international and Canadian submissions, they may emphasize a focus on Quebec-based creators in a given issue.
Deadline: 7 December 2025 (poetry may close earlier)
Length: Up to 3,500 words for prose, up to 3 poems
Pay: CAD75
Details here.
Extra Teeth
This Scottish magazine is open for fiction and creative non-fiction. They also accept translations (see guidelines). They champion Scottish writers, but also accept international submissions. They want work for their print magazine, for which they pay £140,and also select pieces for their Substack, Bite, for which they pay £100. They also offer one or two free mentorships per issue; application is via a form on their guidelines page.
Deadline: 14 December 2025 (midnight BST)
Length: 800-4,000 words
Pay: £100-140
Details here.
The Ex-Puritan
This Canadian literary magazine publishes fiction, non-fiction, experimental/hybrid work, interviews, reviews, poetry, and poetry in translation. The deadline is 25 December, or until filled, for the next issue; they accept a limited number of fee-free submissions every month, and read year-round.
Deadline: 25 December 2025, or until filled
Length: Varies
Pay: CAD200 per essay; CAD150 for fiction; CAD100 per interview or review; CAD50 per poem, capped at CAD100; CAD50+ per experimental or hybrid work, at an increasing scale depending on the nature of the piece.
Details here and here.
Ninth Letter
Ninth Letter is a print magazine published at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. They want “prose and poetry that experiment with form, narrative, and nontraditional subject matter, as well as more traditional literary work.” They are open till end-February. They charge a submission fee, but they do have a fee-free submission period starting 1st December till end-December, or when they hit a submission cap per genre, whichever is earlier.
Deadline (for fee-free submissions): 31 December 2025, or until filled
Length: Up to 8,000 words for prose, up to 8 pages for poetry
Pay: $100 for prose, $25 per poem
Details here.
(Ninth Letter also has a web edition; they have occasional themed calls for that, and separate guidelines.)
SmokeLong Quarterly
They pay for accepted flash narratives – fiction, non-fiction, and hybrid works. They are not charging a submission fee through December. They also accept work in other formats – reviews, art, global flash series. They have a mentorship program (see guidelines), as well.
Deadline (for fee-free submissions): 31 December 2025
Length: Up to 1,000 words
Pay: $100 per narrative, or $150 per story with audio (see guidelines)
Details here.
Chestnut Review
They accept fee-free submissions of flash prose (Black and Indigenous authors can also submit longer prose fee-free – see guidelines), poetry, and art. “We are drawn to beautiful language, resonant images, and we crave narrative.” They read throughout the year, with cut-off dates for issues.
Deadline: 31 December 2025 (for the Spring issue)
Length: Up to 1,000 words for flash prose, up to 3 poems
Pay: $120
Details here and here.
The Deadlands
They are open for fiction (through December) and speculative poetry (for the first three weeks of December). “The Deadlands exists in liminal spaces between life, death, and elsewhere. We are looking for fiction that concerns itself with death—but also everything death may involve.
A ghost in a shadowed wood. An afterlife discovered through a rusted door. An abandoned house in the middle of a haunted field. A skeletal figure moving with intent toward something unseen. … The Deadlands would love to see stories from a worldwide perspective, different cultures, different approaches to death. … We are particularly interested in works by writers from historically marginalized and underrepresented backgrounds.” And, “We are not simply a “horror market.” Sure, we want your horror, but we also want your litfic, your slipstream, your fantasy, your sf, your chicklit, your hist-fic, your everything fic. Death touches everything and so should our fiction.” Also see the kind of stories they do not want, including “Stories about related subjects—zombies, demons, vampires, apocalypses, and the various undead—are not for us.” They also accept reprints.
Deadline: 31 December 2025 for fiction (earlier for poetry – see guidelines)
Length: Up to 5,000 words for fiction, up to 3 poems
Pay: $0.10/word for fiction, $50/poem
Details here and here.
(Submissions are also open for DBS Press: Dracula Beyond Stoker –
they publish fiction issues (with some poetry) featuring characters and more from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. You can read about the magazine here. For their upcoming submission period, they want work on Van Helsing.They pay $0.05/word for stories of 1,500-5,000 words, and the deadline is 31st December 2025; details here.
And, Book Worms Zine wants stories and poetry on the Apocalyptic Horror theme. Please note, submissions have to be mailed. The deadline is 10 January 2026 (must be received by the deadline, so mail early); send up to 1,500 words for fiction, up to 20 lines for poetry. They pay $0.08/word for fiction, $25 for poetry; details here.)
Belmont Story Review
This is a US-based magazine; their website says, “Belmont Story Review is a national magazine of literary arts, faith and culture.” They accept fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Please see their notes about payment, including, “Honorariums can only be provided by U.S. check with a complimentary copy of the magazine. Because we are university-sponsored, we must request a W-9 Form from all of our selected contributors in order to be paid. For those who cannot receive U.S. checks (i.e. outside of the U.S. or Canada), we can pay in kind with additional copies of the magazine. We have no other way to pay you”. Please note, submissions for fiction may close earlier than the deadline if they reach their submission cap.
Deadline: Until filled for fiction; 21 January 2026 for poetry and non-fiction
Length: Up to 12,000 words for prose, up to 5 poems
Pay: $100 for prose, $50 for poetry
Details here and here.
Bourbon Penn
They have detailed guidelines about the kind of stories they want, including, “We are looking for highly imaginative stories with a healthy dose of the odd. Odd characters, odd experiences, odd realities. We’re looking for genre / speculative stories and are quite partial to slipstream, cross-genre, magic realism, absurdist, and the surreal.”
Deadline: Open now
Length: 2,000-7,500 words
Pay: $0.04/word
Details here.
Hybris Press: Otherside
is a new magazine that accepts speculative fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and art by 2SLGBTQIA+ creators only. You can read about them here. They are open for fiction reprints (for stories that cannot be read online for free) and non-fiction submissions currently. They will open for original fiction submissions from 1st to 14th January 2026, and they’ll have an extended submission window only for BIPOC, trans, and/or disabled authors, from 15th to 21st January. Their first issue will be published in March 2026. They do not accept work from writers who do not identify as 2SLGBTQIA+.
Deadline: Ongoing for fiction reprints and non-fiction
Length: 500-7,500 words for reprint fiction (can also take novelette-length but will be a harder sell), up to 4,000 words for non-fiction (prefers up to 2,000 words)
Pay: $100 for fiction reprints and non-fiction
Details here (click on each genre’s tab for detailed guidelines) and here.
Bio: S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She can be reached here.