These markets pay about $50 to $480. They are open for fiction, and a few also accept other genres, like non-fiction and poetry. Some of these are themed calls. The markets are either open now, or will open for submissions soon. Some deadlines are approaching quickly. S. Kalekar
Shoreline of Infinity
They want engaging science fiction or fantasy, that are peopled with “characters we want to meet and have a drink with or from whom we want to run screaming away; we want characters to hug to ease the pain; we want to read the stories of heroes; we want to be your character”, according to their guidelines.
Deadline: 31 May 2020
Length: Up to 6,000 words
Pay: £10 per 1,000 words
Details here.
Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores
This speculative fiction magazine publishes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and artwork. They publish science fiction, fantasy, myth, legend, fairy tales, and eldritch, in written, podcast, video, and/or graphic story form; see guidelines for the hard sells, and the kind of stories they won’t accept. They also accept reprints of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. They have changed their submission schedule from quarterly to once a month. Submissions will be open for the first two days every month (EST), starting June 2020.
Reading period: 1-2 June 2020
Length: Anywhere from 1,000 words and up for fiction (shorter works favored); unspecified for others
Pay: $0.06/word for fiction, $0.02-0.06/word for nonfiction, $1/line for poetry up to 40 lines (lower for longer poems)
Details here.
Prairie Fire: Living in a House on Fire
This Canadian literary magazine accepts fiction, creative non-fiction, essays and poetry from writers in Canada and elsewhere and currently they are reading work on the ‘Living in a House of Fire’ themed issue. Their guidelines say, “Many of us have experienced grief, anxiety and despair around the various outcomes of climate change–fire season, melting glaciers, declining bee populations, droughts, species collapse. Most recently our ways of being in the world have been radically challenged by the COVID-19 global pandemic, the cause of which could be linked to how industrialized farming has contributed to changing our disease ecology. So, how do we, as citizens of this planet, live in a house on fire?
Prairie Fire invites submissions of fiction, creative non-fiction essays and poetry that explore the topic of living in our current time of tremendous uncertainty. We believe that taking on the task of articulating the affective consequences of climate change will help countless others as they find their own language for inevitable loss.”
They’re also reading unthemed work – this can be emailed until 30 June, after which they’ll reevaluate, according to their website.
Deadline: 5 June 2020 for themed submissions
Length: Up to 5,000 words for prose or up to 3 poems for themed issue; up to 10,000 words or up to 6 poems for general
Pay: CAD0.10/word, capped at CAD250 for fiction, CAD50-250 for other prose, CAD40/poem
Details here (themed call), here (general submission guidelines) and here (contributor rates).
Cast of Wonders: Winter Holidays – The Longest Night
This is a young adult science fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction podcast. They will open a brief submission window for fiction on the theme of ‘Winter Holidays – The Longest Night’. See their extensive guidelines for the kind of stories they prefer. They accept reprints and translations, as well. They are also scheduled to open for submissions on another theme later in the month; see their submission schedule here. They also accept work by writers under 18.
Reading period: 1-10 June 2020
Length: Up to 6,000 words
Pay: $0.08/word
Details here and here.
Midnight & Indigo
This is a new platform for Black women writers, and they publish fiction and essays. They want submissions of character-driven speculative fiction/horror from Black women writers for a special issue, and the deadline for this is end June; for general submissions (short stories, narratives and personal essays), the deadline is 2 August 2020. They also accept book reviews year round, though these are unpaid.
Deadline: 28 June 2020 for speculative fiction/horror; 2 August 2020 for general submissions
Length: 1,400-6,000 words for fiction
Pay: $75 for stories in print, $50 for stories on website
Details here.
And Lately, The Sun: Climate change anthology
This is a fiction anthology about climate change. Their guidelines say, “Bushland is burning. The Arctic may soon be ice-free in the summer. Oceans are swelling with the run-off, heaving with endocrine disruptors and plastics, and where corals once thrived there is bleaching and dying. The knock-on effects have barely begun.
Climate change is here. Now what are we going to do about it?
Do we help the environment change as fast as the climate? Release chemical mutagens into the ecosystem to drive natural selection at a hundred miles an hour so we can see what survives on the other side?
Is it time to reinvent our social, political, and economic systems from the top down – or the bottom up? Our current lifestyles could become as alien to the next generation as the Aztec civilisation now is to us. In a world of guerrilla-style eco warriors, or digitised barter economies, or robot socialism, or ageographical nation states, what are the threads we’ll we weave forward?” Stories must explore functional solutions, and not simply highlight problems.
Deadline: 30 June 2020
Length: 2,000-8,000 words; can read exceptional stories outside this range
Pay: AUD$80; one story will receive an editor’s pick payment of AUD$500.
Details here.
Existere
This journal of arts and literature is a publication established and administered by students at York University in Toronto, Canada. They publish poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and art from both local and international contributors. Submissions are accepted all year long. The deadline for submissions to be considered for Fall/Winter issues that are published in October is July 1 while the deadline for submissions to be considered for Spring/Summer issues that are published in June is December 31.
Deadline: Ongoing; 1 July 2020 for Spring/Summer issue
Length: Up to 3,500 words
Pay: $50 (Canadian) per submission (up to $250)
Details here and here.
Channel
This Ireland-based journal takes submissions of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction from all over the world. They publish work that engages with the natural world, and have a particular interest in work which encourages reflection on human interaction with plant and animal life, landscape and the self. They also accept translations. For non-fiction, they accept both completed work and pitches.
Deadline: 31 July 2020 for fiction and poetry; ongoing for nonfiction
Length: Up to 6,000 words for prose; up to 4 poems
Pay: €15 per poem; €15 per page of prose up to €60
Details here.
Black Beacon Books: Murder and Machinery
They want short fiction on the ‘Murder and Machinery’ theme, of machinery used as a means of murder or menace. They want suspense, technological horror, even sci-fi or steampunk. They do not want supernatural fiction. Also, “We strongly recommend you read the classics in this vein to get a feel for the theme: The Lord of the Dynamos – H.G. Wells, The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe, In the Penal Colony – Franz Kafka, The Lift – Arthur Conan Doyle, Moxon’s Master – Ambrose Bierce, for example.” They also accept reprints. They pay £40 for short fiction, and will transfer £43 to cover any transaction costs.
Deadline: 31 July 2020
Length: 2,500-7,000 words
Pay: £43
Details here.
Demon’s Dreaming Press: Something Good to Eat
For this anthology, the editor is looking for horror set in or around Halloween, or relates in some way to the holiday and its customs. Stories can be literary horror, pulp, dark fantasy, gore, magical realism – whatever suits the writer. “Give me your Samhain-inflected stories of vampires, witches, werewolves, ghouls, zombies, ghosts, serial killers, aliens, revenge from beyond the grave, mirrors at midnight. Or maybe something more personal, more idiosyncratic”, according to guidelines. They also accept reprints.
Deadline: 1 August 2020
Length: 2,000-10,000 words
Pay: $100
Details here.
Author Bio: S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She is the author of 182 Short Fiction Publishers. She can be reached here.
