Submit

Submission Guidelines

Fiction Guidelines

Fiction submissions should be sent to submissions@welkinmag.com with the title of your story in the subject line. In your email, please include a short cover letter outlining past publication credits if any, a brief bio if desired, a word count, and which of our magazines you wish to be considered for. The story should be attached to the email as a word document or other common word processing file. Stories should be in standard manuscript format. We accept simultaneous submissions to other journals, but if your story is accepted elsewhere, please alert us immediately.  Please only submit one story at a time for consideration. 

While we encourage genre-bending and tropes typically excluded from mainstream literary magazines, elements of the fantastic and unusual in your work should not be used as a crutch. If your story is boring without fantastic elements, it is also boring with them. We’re looking for work by both veterans and those without a single byline to their name. We especially welcome stories in translation (if you have confirmed with the original’s rights holder that English translation rights are available), stories that draw on elements and modes beyond the European tradition, and stories from traditionally underrepresented groups. 

We have no hard rules regarding story length, but we do cap the whole magazine at 80 pages, so don’t send us more than that. A very long story will need to justify taking space that could have gone to other pieces. A short piece may be easy to squeeze in, but creating a coherent, biting story in 1,000 words is always trickier than doing so in 100,000.

Our focus is exclusively on fiction. We welcome experimentation, but your story should have something that resembles a plot and characters. We do not accept poetry. We do not accept essays. Creative nonfiction making use of the fantastic may intrigue us, but it’s rarely done well.

The best way to find out if you’re right for us is to send us your story. The second best way—and one we highly encourage—is to read some of our back issues.

The Book of Idle Tales

The Book of Idle Tales is our online magazine of flash fiction, which accepts pieces under 1,500 words. Pieces selected for inclusion are not paid. While we may decide that pieces submitted to Welkin are best suited here, pieces which the author would like to only be considered for The Book of Idle Tales should include a [Flash Fiction] tag in brackets in the submission email’s subject line, an act to which the editor would be much obliged and would reward with an expedited response time.

Reading Periods

Neither Welkin nor The Book of Idle Tales is currently accepting submissions.

Illustrator Guidelines

We also encourage artists to submit portfolios for consideration as guest illustrators. They should be sent to art@welkinmag.com. Please include your name as the subject line; and in the body have a link to your online portfolio and make clear which of our two journals you wish to illustrate for. While we allow artistic latitude, illustrators will be expected to adhere to our aesthetic style. 

Payment and Rights

Writers of works accepted by Welkin, our quarterly journal, will be paid $0.01 per word, to be remitted via PayPal within thirty days of signing; we ask first publication rights, as well as six months’ exclusivity. Works accepted by The Book of Idle Tales are unpaid, and we ask only reprint rights.

Illustrators for Welkin, the quarterly journal, will be paid $50.00 to illustrate an entire issue. Guest illustrators for the Book of Idle Tales work on a story-by-story basis and are unpaid.