These magazines pay for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. They’re a mix of literary and genre magazines. Not all are open through the month.
The Ex-Puritan
This Canadian literary magazine publishes fiction, nonfiction, experimental/hybrid work, interviews, reviews, poetry, and poetry in translation. The deadline is 25 December, or until filled, for the next issue; they accept a limited number of fee-free submissions every month, and read year-round.
Deadline: 25 December 2025, or until filled
Length: Varies
Pay: CAD200 per essay; CAD150 for fiction; CAD100 per interview or review; CAD50 per poem, capped at CAD100; CAD50+ per experimental or hybrid work, at an increasing scale depending on the nature of the piece.
Details here and here.
(– Submissions are also open for Extra Teeth. They accept fiction, creative nonfiction, and translations; while they champion Scottish writers, they also accept international submissions. They want work for their print magazine, for which they pay £140,and also select pieces for their Substack, Bite, for which they pay £100. Send works of 800 to 4,000 words. They also offer one or two free mentorships per issue; application is via a form on their guidelines page. The deadline is 14 December 2025, midnight BST.
— Also, The Paris Review will open for poetry submissions on 1st January 2026; their Submittable will stay open till capacity is reached, and they’ll accept postal submissions through January.)
Chestnut Review
They accept fee-free submissions of flash prose (Black and Indigenous authors can also submit longer prose fee-free – see guidelines), poetry, and art. “We are drawn to beautiful language, resonant images, and we crave narrative.” They read throughout the year, with cut-off dates for issues.
Deadline: 31 December 2025 (for the Spring issue)
Length: Up to 1,000 words for flash prose, up to 3 poems
Pay: $120
Details here and here.
SmokeLong Quarterly
They pay for accepted flash narratives – fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid works. They are not charging a submission fee through December. They also accept work in other formats – reviews, art, global flash series. They have a mentorship program (see guidelines), as well.
Deadline (for fee-free submissions): 31 December 2025
Length: Up to 1,000 words
Pay: $100 per narrative, or $150 per story with audio (see guidelines)
Details here.
The Deadlands
They are open for fiction (through December) and speculative poetry (for the first three weeks of December). “The Deadlands exists in liminal spaces between life, death, and elsewhere. We are looking for fiction that concerns itself with death—but also everything death may involve.
A ghost in a shadowed wood. An afterlife discovered through a rusted door. An abandoned house in the middle of a haunted field. A skeletal figure moving with intent toward something unseen. … The Deadlands would love to see stories from a worldwide perspective, different cultures, different approaches to death. … We are particularly interested in works by writers from historically marginalized and underrepresented backgrounds.” And, “We are not simply a “horror market.” Sure, we want your horror, but we also want your litfic, your slipstream, your fantasy, your sf, your chicklit, your hist-fic, your everything fic. Death touches everything and so should our fiction.” Also see the kind of stories they do not want, including “Stories about related subjects—zombies, demons, vampires, apocalypses, and the various undead—are not for us.” They also accept reprints.
Deadline: 31 December 2025 for fiction (earlier for poetry – see guidelines)
Length: Up to 5,000 words for fiction, up to 3 poems
Pay: $0.10/word for fiction, $50/poem
Details here.
(– Submissions are also open now for Ashton House Magazine. This is a new quarterly magazine, their first issue will be published in December 2025. They want literary genre fiction and poetry. “From tales of horror and suspense to crime mysteries, sports yarns, otherworldly adventures and nearly everything in between, we have something for everyone inside of our pages! We strive to continue America’s “pulp fiction” tradition by featuring both new and established authors whose work reaches beyond the grip of time.”
Send up to 5,000 words for fiction, up to 2 poems. They pay $0.06/word for fiction, $40/poem.
— And, Cosmic Horror Monthly will open from 1st to 7th January 2026. They publish weird and cosmic fiction. Their submission portal will open during the reading period. They pay $0.03/word for stories up to 5,000 words.
— 34 Orchard will open briefly in January, as well; “we like dark, intense pieces that speak to a deeper truth. We’re not genre-specific; we just like scary, disturbing, unsettling, and sad.” They pay $50 for stories of 1,000-6,000 words; their submission period is 1st to 10th January 2026. Work sent outside the reading period will be deleted unread.)
Interzone
Interzone is a Europe-based magazine that accepts fantastika of up to 17,500 words. They also accept translations (see guidelines).
Deadline: Open now
Length: Up to 17,500 words
Pay: EUR1.5¢/word
Details here.
Bio: S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She can be reached here.
