These magazines pay from about $75 to $600. A few also accept other genres, like non-fiction and poetry. – S. Kalekar
Westerly
This Australian magazine publishes short stories, poetry, memoir and creative non-fiction, essays and literary criticism. Non-subscribers will be asked to take magazine subscription as part payment for their work. Submission of scholarly articles is accepted year-round.
Deadline: 31 August 2020
Length: Up to 3,500 words for fiction and creative non-fiction; up to five poems; up to 5,000 words for essays; 500-700 words for reviews
Pay: AUD200 for short stories and articles, AUD120-150 for poetry, AUD120 for visual art/intro essay and online pieces, AUD100 for reviews
Details here.
Curiosities and Gallery of Curiosities
This is a speculative fiction anthology magazine and podcast. Most of their stories have some sort of anachropunkish retro-vintage element. As an audio venue, they want short stories that entertain, be it with steampunk, gaslamp, weird tales, dreadpunk, vintage horror, mad science, fantastic cities, monsters, impossible machines, clockworks, alt-history adventures, or weird Westerns. See guidelines for details of the kind of stories they do not want, and the hard sells. They accept multiple submissions (up to three stories – send in separate emails), and reprints.
Deadline: 31 August 2020
Length: Up to 7,500 words
Pay: $0.04/word
Details here.
MANTID
They want Weird fiction – quiet/literary horror fiction from women and women-identifying authors only. They are reading now for their fourth issue. Deadline: 31 August 2020
Length: 2,000-8,000 words
Pay: $75
Details here.
A Multiplicity of Stories
This is a new online magazine and they are reading fiction submissions – they explore underrepresented urban perspectives with storytelling. Their guidelines say, “In the style of popular SFF, preferred stories are fast paced, have a beginning hook, and are short enough to finish in a session but long enough for character development. Focus on a person or two, their key memories, their motives. Genre varies but all have a lot of events happening in a few words to the backdrop of a city, any city of your imagination. Bonus if mentioning climate change!
Alternate history, modern day, speculative, far future, just be creative. … To be realistic about plausible futures, we shy away from uploading, aliens, and global revolutions.” They want #ownvoices stories. They favor longer stories of up to 10k words. Read the guidelines carefully – the anthology uses a Creative Commons licence.
Deadline: “Free submissions are open until early September 2020”
Length: Favor longer stories of up to 10k words
Pay: CAD100 for fiction over 900 words
Details: See the Twitter call here and the website here.
The Arkansas International
This magazine publishes short stories, essays, poetry, graphic literature, and translations. After they hit their monthly free submissions cap, submissions are charged (except translations).
Deadline: 1 May 2021
Length: Up to 8,000 words for prose, up to 5 poems
Pay: $20/page, up to $250
Details here.
Neon Hemlock Press: Baffling Magazine
This is a new speculative fiction magazine. Their guidelines say, “We are looking for speculative stories that explore science fiction, fantasy, and horror with a queer bent. We want queer stories and we want trans stories and we want aro/ace stories. We want indefinable stories. We welcome weird, slipstream, and interstitial writing.”
Deadline: Open now
Length: Up to 1,200 words
Pay: $0.08/word
Details here.
Woods Reader
This is a publication for those who love woodland areas, whether a public preserve, forest, tree farm, backyard woodlot or other patch of trees and wildlife. Apart from fiction/fantasy and short poetry, they also buy the following kind of pieces based on a woodland theme: personal experience, educational or non-fiction, DIY article using woodland materials (accompanying photographs preferred), humor blog or cartoon, destinations, book reviews (please contact them prior to submitting), and assigned topics. While they prefer stories to be 500-1,000 words, they will consider any length, and occasionally buy fiction and true stories that are 2,000-5,000 words (see guidelines). They are not currently accepting submissions pertaining to locations outside of the US and Canada.
Deadline: Open now
Length: 500-1,000 for stories, occasionally 2,000-5,000 words
Pay: $25 for short poetry, $150 for longer articles
Details here.
Wyldblood
Their tagline is ‘Speculative and literary fiction’. They publish short stories and flash fiction. They also publish novellas and novels, for which they pay royalties. Zombies and vampires are a hard sell, though werewolves are always welcome. They have also listed the kind of things they don’t want to see in stories, on their website.
Deadline: Open now
Length: 300-1,000 words for flash, 1,000-6,000 words for short stories
Pay: 1 pence per word (about 1.3 cents)
Details here.
Apex Magazine
This popular, award-winning magazine of science fiction, fantasy, and horror has relaunched after a successful Kickstarter in July 2020.
Deadline: Open now
Length: Up to 7,500 words; additional $0.01/word if the story is podcast
Pay: $0.08/word
Details here.
Bourbon Penn
They want highly imaginative stories with a healthy dose of the odd. They want genre/speculative stories and they are “quite partial to slipstream, cross-genre, magic realism, absurdist and the surreal.”
Deadline: Ongoing
Length: 2,000-7,500 words
Pay: $0.02/word
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.
