updated January 30, 2025
We are currently closed to submissions
Fantasy only accepts anonymous submissions.
Please do not include your name, address, phone number, or other similar identifiers in the manuscript itself. All original fiction and poetry submissions will be read anonymously on first read: moving on to further consideration will depend on the merit of the work alone.
Please make sure the title is on the manuscript.
For poetry, please ensure that the title of each poem is in the manuscript.
Please note: Submissions and purchase decisions at Fantasy have no bearing on any decisions Arley makes as a literary agent, and vice versa. Please do not use Fantasy email addresses, submissions channels, social media, etc., to query or follow up with Arley for literary agent concerns. All opinions expressed by Arley are his own, and do not necessarily reflect ideas, opinions, or values of various organizations, including kt literary. Please see his website for more information on querying.
Please read the FULL guidelines before submitting.
Note that even if you have read through these guidelines once, we may update them from time to time, as our own perspectives on publishing can change over time and conversations.
Definitions… and what we want!
Fantasy means many things to different people. Often it means a shifting of perspective, which seems to imply that there is more, that wherever you are, the world or universe is bigger yet. Whoever you are and wherever you are, that location which seems mundane to you is also Fantastic to others. Fantasy is philosophical as well as experiential, it is thought provoking, and often insists on a sense of wonder and curiosity.
In genre as well as our pages, Fantasy can be dark, or contemporary, it can be urban, surrealism, magical realism, science fantasy, high fantasy, folktales… as well as anything and everything in between. Fantasy is entertainment for the intelligent genre reader—we publish stories of the Fantastic that make us think, and that describe what it is to be human.
We welcome a range of original “speculative works” that can be described as “Fantasy.” All types of Fantasy and dark Fantasy are welcome. These can include horror with a speculative or supernatural flair, as well as the kinds of works which feature or contain similar elements but are harder to describe—precise genre labels are less important to us than what the story does for us as readers. All types of Fantastic works are welcome—dark and moody, bright and hopeful; slipstream or weird or surreal; grounded in science as well as the Fantastic or playing with traditions; and much more. We encourage writers to take chances with their creative endeavors. If you’re not sure whether your work exactly fits what we do, including defining it in comparison to horror or science fiction, go ahead and submit and let the editors decide. That said, this is not a market for works with absolutely no speculative, Fantastic, or similar elements; this is not a market for slasher/horror without that supernatural/paranormal/Fantastic flair; this is not a market for hard science fiction, or science fiction without some kind of Fantasy leaning.
We are particularly interested in work from diverse global perspectives, stories arising from different cultures, and from traditionally underrepresented communities in US/UK and similar markets.
We explicitly encourage submissions from BIPOC* authors, women, queer authors of all kinds, trans and nonbinary authors, as well as authors of a range of genders.
Fantasy accepts submissions of original work in English as well as works translated into English, provided the translator has the right to submit the work.
Please send work in appropriate categories during the appropriate submissions periods. For example, please do not send short stories via the poetry portal during poetry submissions periods.
The Deetz:
Fantasy is seeking flash fiction up to 1,500 words and short stories up to 5,000 words.
Word lengths are hard limits and reflect budgetary restrictions. Please do not query for or submit work that goes beyond the word lengths.
Fantasy is seeking poetry with a preference for shorter form and literary sensibilities: evocative, emotionally resonant, and/or visually vibrant – poems which are viscerally impactful and/or meaningful in some way. At the same time, we will not limit submissions to these parameters. There is no limit on lines or words for poetry, but note that poems are paid on a flat-rate basis.
Fantasy is not currently a market for nonfiction or other types of submissions not specified in these guidelines. Please do not email querying for such.
All work should be original and unpublished (this includes your blog, your website, your newsletter, your Patreon, etc). For works in translation, they should be previously unpublished in English, if not completely original.
Fantasy is not open to multiple fiction submissions or simultaneous fiction submissions**. If a work is on submission somewhere else, please wait before sending it to us. We are okay with simultaneous poetry submissions, but please notify us if the piece is purchased elsewhere.
Please do not send more than one submission in a given category at a time, but you may enter a single submission in each open category at the same time.
For example, if you are waiting to hear back on a short story, please do not submit another short story; but if we then open to poetry, you can also submit poetry. If you are waiting to hear back on a poetry submission, do not send in another poetry submission; but if we open to short story submissions and you are waiting to hear back on the poetry, you can also submit for short story. In fact, if we are open to Flash, Short, and Poetry, you can send in a submission for each of these categories all at the same time if you like.
You may submit up to five poems as a single submission in one single document. Please do not submit more than one batch of five poems at a time.
Pay
Fantasy pays 10¢/word for original fiction and $50 for original poetry.
We typically pay via PayPal, but we will do our best to accommodate your preferred payment method, as we know for non-US-based authors PayPal can be an extremely bad option. We have paid our international authors via: Western Union, World Remit, and Xoom. Hopefully this uncomplicates any issues around payments and you can feel good sending us your works.
Rights: Six months of exclusivity to post your work as well as distribute via email (from the date of publication); first English serial rights; the right to archive your story with our website content and distribute to email subscribers as archived content; the right to print the story in our annual collection.
Submission specifics:
Please remember to NOT include any identifying information on your manuscript apart from the title.
Please submit your manuscript in double-spaced Times New Roman or Courier font, preferably 11 or 12 or 13 pt; or “standard manuscript formatting” / ”modern manuscript formatting” or something very similar. Please consider that we will be reading through thousands of submissions: this formatting helps us both mentally and physically, and will improve our response times. Your manuscript file type should be .RTF, .DOC, or .DOCX.
Poetry need not conform to these formatting restrictions, but please be mindful that we will be looking at many submissions: please make formatting easy for us to read, preferably similar to the above, barring formatting techniques which are part of the poem itself. For publication, we will do our best to honor the desired formatting of poetry, but please keep in mind that we may need to alter formatting to meet reasonable needs or limitations of the publishing processes. We will do our best in these cases to work with the poet to find a presentation which they find acceptable.
If your work in a given category is not accepted for purchase, please wait at least 7 days after receiving a rejection to submit again in that category. In some cases, this may mean you will have to wait for a future submissions window. These limits help to make the process much more manageable.
All submissions must be submitted through our Moksha system. Please do not email your submissions.
Cover Letters:
Your cover letter should be brief and may include your name and other identifying elements. It should contain the length of your work, your publishing history, and any other relevant information (for example, if you send a story about a topic which you studied or about which you have other kinds of direct experience, this can be helpful for us to know). If you don’t have credentials to cite? Ultimately, we care about the work, not the resumé.
You are welcome and encouraged to share whatever identity information you would like to share in your cover letter – for example, if you are queer, BIPOC, or anything else; but this is not required. If your work is an “own voices” work you are welcome and encouraged to let us know, but it is not required. We are concerned with representation in the field, and the ways our efforts engage with, contribute to, or impact what the field is doing. This information may help us to be self-aware in what we are showcasing; but individuals who do not feel comfortable or simply don’t want to share this kind of information should not feel obliged to share it. Reminder: our initial reads will be anonymized.
You are welcome to send work rejected by sibling mag The Deadlands, as well as work Arley and Shingai rejected in other venues (for example, PodCastle and Fantasy Magazine under previous editorial leadership). If you have previously received personal rejections on a specific work from both Shingai and Arley in our roles at other venues, however, this indicates that we have both already seen the work, so we strongly recommend sending something else—unless the work has seen significant revisions; or, unless our personal notes bemoaned the fact that we are limited by budgets, and stated that we would have loved to purchase that piece.
Response Times:
Shingai and Arley do not use “slush readers” or first readers of any kind. They read all submissions themselves, and Fantasy is a passion project. They both have other projects, including day jobs, which are required in order to meet basic financial needs. Shingai and Arley also describe themselves as relatively slow readers.
This means response times may be much longer than some markets. Please keep this in mind as you submit.
Manuscript and submission guidelines, such as formatting and other specifics, help both Shingai and Arley to look at the hundreds of submissions we receive. They may seem arbitrary, but looking through hundreds of submissions becomes more challenging both mentally and physically with varying fonts, overloaded submissions numbers, and other things that can arrest or throw off the process.
If your submission has had a “first look” and is being held for further consideration you will receive a notice. We will try to post updates on our overall reading progress via social media and the Fantasy site. Please do not query to see if we’ve seen your work unless our update indicates that you should have received some kind of response but you have not.
All submissions should receive a response of some kind, once we’ve had time to look at them.
Withdrawing or updating your submission:
Please note that authors have the right to withdraw their work at any time without sharing the reasons.
For example, perhaps a call for an anthology comes up, and you are waiting to hear back on a submission. You may choose to withdraw your work so that you can submit it to the anthology. You do not need to email to let us know, nor do you need to ask for permission.
If you withdraw your work before we have seen it, you can resubmit it at a later time, but it will be treated as a “new” submission and will have “lost its place in line.” If we have closed since then, you may submit again when we reopen.
If you feel like you have updated your work since your submission and you would prefer we see the newer version, that is okay, but you must withdraw the original submission first and then send in the newer version as a new submission—this means your submission will lose its place in line.
Exceptions will be made only for works which have had a first look and are being held for further consideration—you will have received a notice if this is the case.
Feedback:
Many writers, including experienced writers, would like feedback on their work (or to know why the work was rejected). Some writers detest when editors give feedback or similar notes.
We may or may not give feedback, case by case; we can never promise it.
If you are an individual who finds feedback annoying (or worse), we recommend that you mention this in your cover letter with a simple “I prefer to not receive feedback” (or something similar and brief, such as “no feedback”) so that we know to avoid doing this for that particular work.
Please do not rely on us knowing that you are an author who doesn’t want feedback, even if you end up telling us multiple times: we will be looking through hundreds and in some cases over a thousand submissions. It is better to let us know in your cover letter that you don’t want it. Please know that we will not be offended by this.
If you are eager for feedback, you are welcome to note this in your cover letter – please understand that we may not have time or otherwise may not be able to give it.
Very very very importantly: you may see us as “editors” but quite seriously, any feedback we give is just our opinion. You are not required to follow it, you don’t have to agree, and it’s possible that another editor will have a very different perspective. The creative work is YOUR WORK and you should do what is right for you.
Please do not request feedback after receiving a rejection, nor email asking for an explanation.
We don’t always have meaningful thoughts to offer, and even a line or two of feedback can often take thirty minutes to an hour to compose.
Probably Not to Hard No:
Sexual themes and stories with strong sexual content are acceptable, but Fantasy is not a market for erotica. If in doubt, submit the work and let our editors decide.
Fantasy is not a market for media-based works (such as stories set in the A Game of Thrones or Buffy the Vampire Slayer universes and so on), or fan fiction. This kind of stuff is great! We’re just not the place for it—works like these raise legal complications when it comes to publication.
No casual or blatant misogyny, bigotry, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and otherwise insensitive pieces.
An author exploring these themes in an “own voices” sense (for example, a Black woman discussing racism and misogyny through her work) does not fall into this category, and is probably telling stories we actively want to see. Authors exploring the trauma of folks outside their direct lived experiences often inadvertently fall into this category; in these cases, in general, we recommend writing with deep empathy, and having your work read by folks with those direct lived experiences before submitting.
We are not interested in gratuitously violent pieces. Violence can work brilliantly in stories, and we aren’t averse to it; but this isn’t a market for violence “just because.”
Hard “NO” on work that uses neurodivergence or mental health as a horror element or neurodivergent individuals as easy go-to villains. As above, neurodivergent authors exploring these themes in an “own voices” sense do not fall into this category.
Please do not submit comedy that relies on deprecating others for humor. HARD PASS.
No work that thoughtlessly leans into or relies on standard stereotypes of people based on race, class, gender, sexual orientation, etc, and/or that utilizes any number of tired and often micro-aggressive or racist/sexist/~phobic tropes. As above, writers deliberately exploring similar via “own voices” approaches do not fall into this category.
We are not interested in pieces that minimize sexual trauma as a plot device, especially written by folks outside of the lived experiences of the traumatized individual, particularly with regards to women, queer folks, trans folks, and others from typically under- and mis- represented demographics.
We are not interested in AI-generated fiction.
Reaching out!
For questions or problems beyond what is covered here, please email (fantasy AT psychopomp dot com).
Please do not email your submissions. Submissions sent via email will be deleted unread.
Please do not use this email to engage with Arley around agenting topics. Please see his personal site for the appropriate contact info. These emails will be deleted unread, including book queries and similar.
Due to the amount of work it takes to run a magazine, and the work we have to do outside of the magazine, we may not respond to all emails—or, a response may not come for a while. If you send a note such as “Thanks for considering my work” we will most likely read it when we can but will not respond. We appreciate the thought, as well as any and all positive vibes!
We are excited to see your work! We can’t wait to discover new favorite reads, and to fall in love with your pieces! So much about this industry comes down to personal taste or even timing. Regardless of whether or not something lands for us or fits what we do, please remember:
“Rejection” is not a measure of quality: find other ways to figure out if your work is doing what you want it to do, and keep writing!
Thank you!
—Shingai & Arley and the entire Fantasy team!
*Black, Indigenous, and other People of Colo(u)r – this includes mixed folks (like Arley) and “People of Colo(u)r” from other countries, with the understanding that the term exists only in context (ie: many individuals that are considered “People of Colo(u)r” in the US and similar are not usually seen as “People of Colo(u)r” in the context of other global cultures; this is a term that gets applied to them by centering specific cultural notions of race and/or pigment). Used here as a familiar term, far from a perfect term, and noting that some members of communities of colo(u)r may feel the term itself does not properly serve everyone it’s meant to serve.
**The term “Multiple submissions” refers to the practice of sending multiple pieces of work at once to a single venue. It can also refer to the practice of sending a second, third, or more pieces of work to a single venue before receiving a response on the earlier submission. “Simultaneous submissions” refers to the practice of sending a single work to multiple venues—for example, submitting the same story to both The Deadlands and Fantasy at the same time; or, submitting to one while still waiting on a response from the other. Submission Grinder is a fantastic tool for writers, and can help writers discover which markets accept or do not accept multiple and/or simultaneous submissions: https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/
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