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Themed Calls for Submission: Round-Up for Jan.-Mar. 2022



With 2022 just around the corner, lists of new year's resolutions are beginning to materialize left and right. For many a poet, a prominent aspirational goal that surfaces around this time every year is "write more." If this is true for you, you may find the following round-up of upcoming calls from editors seeking sci-fi/fantasy/horror poetry centered on specific themes to be a helpful bit of inspiration that starts you off on the right foot.


Here are a few of the opportunities available in the first three months of 2022 to contribute themed genre poetry to paying journals, listed in order of nearness of submission deadline:



  • Enchanted Conversation ("Weather" Issue) Theme: Weather Deadline: 3 Jan. 2022 (submissions open 1 Jan.) What they want: Poems "inspired by fairy tales" that revolve around the theme of weather. Pieces submitted should incorporate fantasy elements as well as "rain, blizzards, hail, lightning, hurricanes, thunder, heat, clouds" and the like. NB: If you have the perfect weather-themed fantasy poem to submit and miss the January window, don't panic! Submissions are open for works on the same theme throughout 2022 during set start-of-month 3-day windows, i.e. March 1-3, May 1-3, Aug. 1-3, and Oct. 1-3.


  • NonBinary Review (Issue #27) Theme: Shared Worlds Deadline: 1 Feb. 2022 (submissions open now!) What they want: Poems of any form featuring original protagonists in narratives clearly “based in a well-established fictional world” that “obey that world’s rules and customs.” NB: While poems submitted may make mention of “major characters or previously published stories from [another author's] worlds,” they should not center on these characters/storylines. The setting should be recognizably that pertaining to a known published work of fiction (e.g. Narnia), but the protagonist(s) and plot should be original to the poems.


  • Last Girls Club (Spring 2022 Issue) Theme: Active Shooter Deadline: 1 Feb. 2022 (submissions open Jan. 1) What they want: Horror and/or eerie supernatural poems of 200 words or less that tell stories from the point of view of “smart female protagonists” that do not pander to “the male gaze.” Poems for the “active shooter” issue should thematically incorporate gun violence in the public/professional sphere and/or responses to the threat of such violence: “Think of the new training videos/protocols for students and teachers, office spaces, public spaces, the sense of inevitability of every news cycle including a shooting.”



  • Apparition Lit (Issue #18) Theme: Wanderlust Deadline: 28 Feb. 2022 (submissions open 15 Feb.) What they want: Poetry with "obvious fantasy or sci-fi elements" that addresses the theme of wanderlust. NB: The window for "BIPOC-only submissions" runs a week longer than the general window. Deadline "for BIPOC creators only" is Mar. 7, 2022.



  • Eye to the Telescope (Issue #44) Theme: Notional Ekphrasis Deadline: 15 Mar. 2022 (submissions open now!) What they want: Poems of any form “inspired by works of art that exist only in your own imagination (or that of others), from any period in time or space.”




  • FIYAH (Issue #23) Theme: Food and Cuisine Deadline: 30 Apr. 2022 (submissions open Mar. 1) What they want: Speculative poems by Black writers centered on the topics of food and drink, especially work dealing with cuisine as a part of inherited culture and/or delving into the communal aspects of meal preparation and consumption. The editors seek imaginative “tales of scents, sounds and flavors. Of contacting ancestors to answer the grits debate once and for all. Of cloning long extinct spices, cookbook grimoires,” etc., etc. NB: FIYAH's editors are looking for work specifically by "Black people of the African Diaspora [...] anywhere in the world," including "mixed/biracial and Afro-appended people." Only writers who meet this description should submit.


 

Thanks for checking in. Wishing you all a peaceful and productive end to 2021 and an excellent start to 2022!


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