Submission guidelines

• Science fiction, fantasy, or supernatural horror prose with a strong emotional or psychological focus. We are mainly interested in fiction, but we're open to speculative memoir or creative non fiction, as long as it has speculative elements. Please see 'What We Like' below for some examples.
• Stories in English, between 500 and 2,500 words.
• Please send only one story at a time.
• Simultaneous submissions (when you send your story to more than one magazine at once) are welcome, please just let us know straight away by emailing us at ourinnerworlds[at]protonmail.com if your story is accepted elsewhere and you need to withdraw it.
• Reprints are welcome, as long as they're not already available somewhere free to read online.

Inner Worlds will publish four times a year, in February, May, August, and November, with four reading periods.

The first two weeks of each reading period are reserved for members of marginalised groups, primarily BIPOC, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women and other marginalised genders, neurodivergent authors, Deaf and disabled authors, and authors with lived experience of mental health challenges or who identify as Mad.

The second half of each reading period is for general submissions and is open to everyone.

• January 1 - 14 Members of marginalised groups only.
• January 15 - 31 General submissions.
• April 1 - 14 Members of marginalised groups only.
• April 15 - 30 General submissions.
• July 1 - 14 Members of marginalised groups only.
• July 15 - 31 General submissions.
• October 1 - 14 Members of marginalised groups only.
• October 15 - 31 General submissions.

If you have been published in Inner Worlds before, please wait one issue before submitting again.

• Please remove your name and any other identifying information from the document.
• When you're preparing your document please use black text, in a font and size that's easy to read, on a plain white background. If you like, you're welcome to use modern manuscript format.
• Include any content warnings for your piece at the top of the first page. If in doubt about whether to add a content warning or not, please do, and especially for stories which feature abuse, sexual assault, psychosis, or suicide.
• Our submission manager can accept .doc, .docx, .pdf, and .txt file types.
• Cover letter is optional (here are some examples) but if your work is a reprint, please let us know when and where it was published before. And if there's anything you'd like us to know about your identity or your experience, please include it in the cover letter.
• If your work is accepted for publication you are welcome to use a pen name or to be anonymous.
• When you're ready to submit your work please use our submission form.
• You should receive a confirmation email when you submit your story. If you haven't received this, please check your junk mail folder. Similarly, if you have received no response to your submission after three weeks, please check your junk mail folder. If there's nothing there, feel free to ask for an update by emailing me at ourinnerworlds[at]protonmail[dot]com.

• We offer payment of £0.02 per word for each piece accepted, with a minimum £20 payment.
• Payment can be made via PayPal, WISE transfer, or UK bank transfer.
• For original, unpublished works we request first worldwide publication rights in English. For reprints we request non-exclusive reprint rights.
• Please think carefully before sending us your original work. Once it has been published somewhere you won't be able to sell it to another market at the same rate, so if you haven't already, you might want to try it at some higher profile, higher paying markets first. (We love Submission Grinder and Chill Subs to find markets!)

Here are some works and authors we love!

SHORT STORIES

"That Story Isn't The Story" by John Wiswell

"I Wear My Spiders In Remembrance Of Myself" by Kel Coleman

"Sand" by Jasmin Kirkbride

"Getaway" by Jennifer Hudak

"The Final Whisper" by Jon Olfert

"Haunting Lessons" by Patrick Barb

"Second Chances" by Lesley Nneka Arimah

"Away With The Wolves" by Sarah Gailey

"Nice Things" by Ellen Klages

"The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu

"When I Lived with the Witch" by Sage Tyrtle

"85 Days In Flight" by Madeehah Reza

"We Bleed Water" by Katie McIvor

"Where Are You Right Now?" by Rodrigo Culavoski.

BOOKS

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker

A Close And Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

What Moves The Dead by T.Kingfisher

Burning Girls by Veronica Shanoes

The Last House On Needless Street by Catriona Ward

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due.

• Don't send us work that is sexist or misogynist, racist, ableist, anti-fat, or harmful to LGBTQIA+ people.
• Don't send us stories which rely on stereotypes (here's a list of resources to help identify these).
• Porn and erotica are not for us. If there's a sex scene in your story please add a content warning.
• Don't send us stories featuring graphic depictions of physical or sexual abuse.
• We are very interested in stories which express or explore experiences of mental and emotional distress, extreme states, and madness. However, we are keen to avoid the many harmful tropes in this area. For example: a 'mad' or 'mentally ill' person is a murderer; the whole story is revealed to have taken place in the mind of a psychiatric inpatient; the protagonist meets an eldritch horror and 'goes insane' in a theatrical manner etc
• We don't ask for stories to be 'own voices' (that is, for the writer to have lived experience as a member of the identity group they are writing about) but please think carefully about why you are the right person to tell this story, and what research you might need to do to tell it sensitively.
• Don't send us work created using generative AI tools such as Story Engine or ChatGPT. Assistive tools like spelling and grammar checkers or dictation software are fine.

First of all; I'm sorry. Rejections always hurt, especially when it's a story you've put your heart into.

Just because we didn't accept your story doesn't mean it's no good, or that it won't find a home somewhere. Even if we really like a story, we can't always take it. We can only afford to buy a few stories for each issue, and as well as looking at each story on its own merits we're thinking about balancing topics, genres, tone etc.

I hope you can be proud that:

a) you wrote the story in the first place, that's something a lot of people will think about their whole lives but never actually do

b) you took a chance and sent it out into the world, which takes courage. 

Thank you for sharing it with us.

We're also open to scifi, fantasy, or horror* cover art submissions from everyone during all submissions periods. Payment if accepted is £50. All rights remain with you, and we don't ask for exclusivity.

We won't accept artworks created using Midjourney or any similar generative 'AI' tools. We also can't use any art which features copyrighted characters, so fan art is out.

Please send up to three pieces for consideration to ourinnerworlds[at]protonmail[dot]com when submissions are open.

*To save your time: please no gore, spiders, erotica, or anything that might make someone with trypophobia feel queasy 😅