Publication of Microfiction in The Sunlight Press: Red

 I am very pleased to share the publication of my microfiction, "Red," in The Sunlight Press. Content warning: This is about a miscarriage. You can read it here.

Call for Submissions: The Wild Umbrella

Submissions are OPEN

Submitting to The Wild Umbrella means sending your stories, essays, poems, and now cover art (for our print edition) to a team of thoughtful readers and editors who'll take time and care to polish, publish, and energetically promote your work. Submissions are free, and contributors will be paid €10 per poem and €25 per story or essay, and €50 for accepted cover art submissions.

Fiction

Our fiction team looks forward to reading any and all genres of interesting, genuine, and thought-provoking work; independent stories and stand-alone excerpts from long pieces are welcome, with submissions accepted up to 4,000 words.

Poetry

1-5 poems of any length; our multidisciplinary poetry team looks forward to reading any genre, structure, topic, or concept that you have to offer. The team is currently enjoying collections by Seán Hewitt, Victoria Kennefick, June Jordan, and Carl Phillips, among plenty of others.

Non-Fiction

Submit anything less than 4,000 words. Our non-fiction team enjoys reading a wide array of work, including nature, travel, food, sport, and topical/satirical essays (we like humor with an edge).

Cover Art

For our yearly print anthology, we're looking for submissions of photography or art that would make a vivid and visceral front cover. Ideally, submitted pieces would be able to be fit into an A5-sized page, but we will consider all types and sizes of art and photography.

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions: Variant Literature

Submit March 1st through April 5th for consideration for our Summer Issue

• Please submit only once per submission period unless otherwise invited.

• We do not accept e-mail submissions; all work must be submitted through Submittable.

• Please send all work in one file.

• We aim to respond to your work within two months; our average response time is closer to one month.

• Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.

• We do not accept previously published works.

Poetry 

There are no format restrictions. 

Limit your submission to 5 poems totaling no more than 10 pages.

Fiction 

Authors should limit submissions to no more than 20 pages (5500 words).

Flash and Micro Series

Please send ONE piece of flash fiction or flash nonfiction (1200 words or less) or a connected series of THREE micros (250 to 400 words each).

What happened to the nonfiction genre?

If your nonfiction is less than 1200 words, submit to the flash genre. We are not looking for longer nonfiction.

Payment

We pay $10 per accepted story, poem, or micro series. We pay through PayPal.

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions from LGBTQ+ Writers: Foglifter Journal

Foglifter’s literary journal is a biannual compendium of the most dynamic, urgent LGBTQ+ writing today. It’s a space where queer and trans writers celebrate, mourn, rage, and embrace.

Foglifter welcomes daring and thoughtful work by queer and trans writers in all forms, and we are especially interested in cross-genre, intersectional, marginal, and transgressive work. We want the pieces that challenged you as a writer, what you poured yourself into and risked the most to make. But we also want your tenderest, gentlest work, what you hold closest to your heart. Whatever you’re working on now that’s keeping you alive and writing, Foglifter wants to read it.

What does that look like? Check out some writing we love from our recent issues:“Seven Dates” by Elliot Gish
“Whirlpool” by Meg Cass
“Zulum,” by Fargo Tbakhi
“INWARD ASPECT,” by Chekwube Danladi
“Magical Faggot as Cinematic Study,” by Dez Deshaies

Submission periods for our literary journal are:March 1 to May 1 (Fall Edition)

September 1 to November 1 (Spring Edition)

We are always open for cover art! Reach our Print and DIgital Production Manager Alice Lee at:

production@foglifterpress.com

The Writers In Need fund supports sliding scale payments for our contributors. While we have been deeply fortunate to be able to compensate contributors for their important and incredible writing with a modest honorarium, Foglifter recognizes the many intersections of our queer and trans artistic communities, and that members of our community may be differently impacted by financial insecurity and historical disenfranchisement. This fund is an attempt to address those inequities.

The Writers In Need fund is sourced in a few ways:Each journal issue’s contributors may choose to donate a portion of (or their entire) honorarium to the Writers In Need fund.
Writers who submit to Foglifter will be able to donate to the fund via the “Tip Jar” option in Submittable.

Donations will be accepted from our extended community and supporters via PayPal here.

Before honorariums are distributed, contributors will fill out a Google form to select from the following options:

1. their full honorarium
2. a smaller honorarium, donating the remainder to the Writers In Need fund
3. their full honorarium AND an additional disbursement from the Writers In Need fund

Submit your work here (except for art, which has an email submission address above).

Call for Submissions: Banshee: A Literary Journal

Submissions for issue #20 will be open from 1-31 March 2025.

Clara Kumagai as our fiction editor for issue #20 (autumn/winter 2025).

Clara Kumagai is from Ireland, Japan and Canada. Catfish Rolling, her debut novel, was a 2024 YOTO Carnegie Medal nominee, and winner of the 2024 KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Book of the Year. Her second novel, Songs for Ghosts, is forthcoming in March 2025. She lives and writes in Ireland. She says:

I am delighted to be the guest fiction editor for the 20th issue of Banshee – what an honour to be part of such an anniversary!

The theme I’ve chosen for this issue is ‘Speculative Fiction, or It doesn’t have to be this way’. It was Ursula K. LeGuin who coined this as a simple summary of what fantasy and sci-fi can achieve: a way of looking at the world and ourselves and imagining how else they might be. It is playful, she said, and it is also subversive.

What excites me about speculative fiction is not really magic wands, elves or spaceships, but its ability to examine our world through the lens of another. I want stories that illuminate with a new light; that bring us closer to the familiar through the strange; that demonstrate humanity through what at first appears alien. I hope for fiction that experiments with form as well as content, and pays as much attention to the sentence as the world-building. So send your stories of the uncanny, weird, fabulist; the what-ifs of the past, present or future; of this world or new ones that might be in ways of your own imagining.

• Banshee welcomes submissions from both Irish and international writers of any background, including first-time writers. We welcome work from members of groups or communities typically under-represented within literature, whether or not the work addresses this.

• All submissions should be previously unpublished.

• Our guideline word count for stories and essays is max 5000 words. Flash fiction should be under 1000 words, poems no more than 40 lines.

• We are happy to read: one story or one essay or two flashes or up to four poems. Please only submit in one category per submissions period.

• Submissions should be in one .doc or .docx attachment. Prose submissions should be double-spaced.

• Please include a third-person bio (max 50 words) in the body of your email. If you are sending a prose submission, please note the word count of the piece in the body of the email.

• Email to:

 subs dot bansheelit at gmail dot com, 

indicating the category of your submission in the subject line (e.g. Flash/Story/Essay/Poetry).

• We are happy to consider simultaneous submissions, but ask that you notify us as soon as your work is accepted elsewhere.

• Please note that we cannot offer feedback on unsuccessful submissions.

• We believe in paying writers. We can offer contributors a small fee as well as a copy of the journal.

Writing Competition: James Laughlin Award

James Laughlin Award

Offered since 1954, the James Laughlin Award is given to recognize and support a second book of poetry forthcoming in the next calendar year. The award was endowed in 1995 by a gift to the Academy from the Drue Heinz Trust. It is named for the poet and publisher James Laughlin (1914–1997), who founded New Directions in 1936.

The winning poet receives a prize of $5,000, an all-expenses-paid weeklong residency at The Betsy Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida, and distribution of the winning book to approximately one thousand Academy of American Poets members.

Submissions for the 2025 James Laughlin Award will be accepted from January 1, 2025 to May 15, 2025.

The judges of the 2025 James Laughlin Award are Tyree Daye, Richie Hofmann, and Donika Kelly.

More information and submission link here.

Call for Submissions: Certain Age

Certain Age is looking for gorgeous essays, fiction, poetry, art, photography and video work from creative people "of a certain age" and a lot of attitude.

Sound like you?

Nonfiction

We're interested in works of up to 2500 words that explore big ideas, small wonders, topical issues, cultural happenings, and profiles of fascinating people. Looking for a strong voice and an uncompromising commitment to factual accuracy. Please take a look at the articles we have published to get a feel for the tone and length.

Fiction

We welcome literary-leaning fiction, short stories or stand-alone novel excerpts, that use narrative to explore the full realm of human experience. Max length is 5000 words. While we welcome all topics, we will decline pieces that feature gratuitous depictions of violence, sexual exploitation, or the exploitation of children or animals.

Poetry

We are drawn to poems that illuminate the human by offering fresh ways to see, feel, know, and alchemize experience to insight. All types of poetry will be considered, including formal and experimental verse, up to two pages in length.

Photographs, Illustrations, Video

We are eager to showcase the work of photographers, illustrators, designers, and videographers.

Certain Age does not accept:

Work that has been previously curated (published in books, magazines or journals, in print or online). Writing may be self-published on social media, blogs, or message boards. (Learn more in “Uncurated: The Case for a New Term of Art.”) Work that has been generated by artificial intelligence.

Nonfiction, Fiction, Art, Photography, Video

 

Send submissions to:

 

info@certainagemag.com 

 

Include the genre of your submission in the subject line (i.e., Nonfiction Submission or Photographs Submission, etc.).

 

Add a brief introduction to the work in the body of the email, why you see it as a fit for Certain Age, and any background on yourself (prior pubs, cat names, etc.).

Submit as an attached document (.doc or .docx), and please no PDFs or Google docs.

Poetry

 

Certain Age publishes two poets monthly. Please follow these guidelines for submission.

Email up to five poems or five pages of poetry to:

 

poetry@certainagemag.com.

• Please make sure each new poem starts at the top of a new page.

• In your email subject line, write: [YOUR LAST NAME] [YOUR FIRST NAME] Poetry Submission.
  

• Submit all poems together in one DOC or DOCX file.

• Name your document: [YOUR LAST NAME] [YOUR FIRST NAME] Poetry Submission.

• Do not submit PDF files or links to google docs.

• Do not paste poems into the body of the email.

•  On the first page of your document, include a cover letter with:

• What inspired you to submit to Certain Age.

• A short bio (under 50 words).

• Your contact information: name, mailing address, phone number, and email.

• Social links, if you use them and would like us to tag you, including: Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn.

• Up to three links to previous publications, if available.

• If a poet’s submission has been previously rejected by Certain Age, we will consider new work from that poet after one calendar year.

For all submissions include:

• Name, mailing address, phone number, and email address.

• Up to three links to previous publications, if available.

• A brief (max 50 words) third-person bio.

Simultaneous submissions are expected and welcome. But please alert us if the piece your submitting gets accepted elsewhere.

We pay $75 or equivalent in local currency upon publication.

Certain Age Magazine asks for first-time rights and acknowledgement as the first place of publication. Because published pieces will appear and be archived on the website and may be promoted through our social media outlets, we also require non-exclusive electronic rights.

Response Time

We are committed to fast turnaround on all queries and submissions.

Thank you for your interest.