10 Lit Mags That Want Your Freak Sh*t
Sub Club Specials x Forever Favorites (10.2.25) | A monthly Sub Club x Forever Workshop collaboration
We’re two days into October, so it’s practically Halloween. And what better way to celebrate than with a list of lit mags that want your freak shit? Nah, I couldn’t think of anything better, either.
The magazines below are seeking the weirdest and most wonderful work in your Google Drive: surreal, avant-garde, unsettling, ugly, and a little off. Perfect for the spookiest season. And also for life, honestly.
The list below is 100% free, thanks to a sponsorship from our sister pub, The Forever Workshop. When you’re done here, head over there to check out their October workshop, The Scary Story Sprint: Write (& Submit) Four Freaky Flash Pieces This Month, led by horror queen Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya. P.S.: TFW just dropped the first lesson for free, and you can access it below. I promise it’ll be a good time.
And now, our list of weird, freaky mags that want your weird, freaky writing. Have fun!
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Okay Donkey | #off-kilter and just plain weird
→ Why it made the list: Okay Donkey is the perfect fit for the literary eccentric. Seeking work that is funny and sad at the same time, Okay Donkey loves to publish poetry and flash that’s odd, surreal, and experimental. The magazine is inspired by a varied collection of authors, from Claudia Rankine and James Tate for poetry to Roxane Gay and Ben Loory for prose. It’s a safe space for work that has big feelings and a limited word count.
→ Acceptance rate: 1% → Pay: $20 → Genres: Poetry and flash fiction, the latter up to 1,200 words.
A Minor Magazine | #gothic, gloomy, elegant AF
→ Why it made the list: Firstly, the unintentional (I think?) Alicia Keys reference.1 Secondly, and more importantly, the vibes. A Minor is a small indie mag with a dedicated community, featuring work that’s darkly lyrical, wildly imaginative, and genre-blurring. It publishes across genres and styles, as long as the work is innovative, surreal, and scary good. On top of that, A Minor has been around since 2010—a whole teenager!—and is committed to publishing both emerging and established writers.
→ Acceptance rate: <1% → Pay: None → Genres: Poetry and flash—both fiction and nonfiction. For poetry, you can submit up to five pieces. Prose-wise, A Minor primarily publishes nonfiction, but does welcome fiction as long as it’s “dark and quirky.”
Surely Magazine | #grotesque and genreless
→ Why it made the list: Ah, the horror of existing inside of yourself. Surely Magazine is interested in “the body and its grotesqueries, the brain and its tricks.” It longs for big swings: writing that is good, that is strange, that is practically without genre, and that lures you in. That shows up on the literal page, too: The dichotomy between the playful design of Surely’s website and the intimate yet haunting prose published there is pretty damn seductive.
→ Acceptance rate: 11.54% → Pay: None → Genres: Fiction only: short stories up to 2,500 words, or three flash fiction pieces up to 500 words each.
Rejection Letters | #heartbroken and hysterical
→ Why it made the list: Honestly, Rejection Letters is just cool. The ethos of founding editor DT Robbins—“Don’t make exceptions. Fuck the rules. Do what you want. Burn it all down. Or don’t listen to me. Your funeral,” as he told us once—permeates throughout the mag. Unsurprisingly, the work within is honest without being earnest: plainspoken, confessional, bordering on the absurd.
→ Acceptance rate: 5.59% → Pay: None → Genres: Rejection Letters accepts, well, rejection letters, as well as fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and hybrid.
elsewhere | #weird but also tragically relatable
→ Why it made the list: There’s a reason elsewhere made our list of mags that want your sexy, weird, and tragically relatable writing. elsewhere publishes short prose that “mutilates genre” with a lyricism that’s equal parts freaky, of course, and palpable—as an example, a recent work describes spelunking a great-grandmother’s spinal cord. And although the mag only publishes six writers at a time, releasing quarterly, it’s always open for submissions—meaning you can shoot your shot whenever.
→ Acceptance rate: 9.52% → Pay: Yes → Genres: Any unlineated prose will do here, as long as it’s less than 1,000 words: Flash fiction, prose poetry, and nonfiction are accepted.
X-R-A-Y | #big, ugly feelings
→ Why it made the list: X-R-A-Y welcomes ugly feelings and taboo topics, publishing prose that’s equal parts uncomfortable and entertaining. The editors here look for work that’s strange, silly, and voice-driven—something bold and weird that seeks to make the hidden more visible. In encouraging news, they publish pretty frequently too, with new stories and features going up four to five times a week.
→ Acceptance rate: 3.48% → Pay: None → Genres: X-R-A-Y only publishes prose, including short stories (2,000–7,500 words); creative nonfiction (300–7,500 words); flash fiction (300–2,000 words), and micros (up to 300 words).
Broken Antler | #haunts you in your sleep
→ Why it made the list: Broken Antler tells you, straight up, that their EIC likes “writing that screws with her sleep schedule.” With an all-women and queer masthead, this is a lit mag that leans into writing that’s dark, unsettling, experimental, and absurd. Both genre and literary works are welcome, and Broken Antler especially loves all things horror and fucked up (their words!).
→ Acceptance rate: 6.61% → Pay: $10-$20 → Genres: Broken Antler publishes “horror and weird fiction, as well as sci-fi and dark fantasy.” It also publishes poetry, creative nonfiction, and hybrid, as long as the work is haunting, monstrous, strange, and bizarre. They give bonus points for work that does something unusual with form.
Weird Lit Mag | #for the weird and the boundless
→ Why it made the list: Debuting in 2024, Weird Lit Mag is relatively new on the scene. Even so, the editors here have already made things crystal clear: They want work that’s absurdist, ambiguous, and avant-garde. Okay, alliteration! Weird’s love language is prose led by a strong voice, and it publishes a variety of styles and moods—bleak and existential, but humorous and hopeful, too. Issues are published quarterly, on solstices and equinoxes. Mmm, witchy.
→ Acceptance rate: 6.78% → Pay: None → Genres: Weird Lit Mag publishes fiction in a variety of styles, including horror, literary, magical realism, speculative, slipstream, and more. Short stories should be under 3,000 words, and flash pieces should be under 1,000.
Fantastic Other | #deeply meaningful and completely unhinged
→ Why it made the list: The work in Fantastic Other is equal parts dreamy and nightmarish. This is a magazine that encourages writers to show off their weird, with work that sits in the space between the conscious and unconscious. The poetry and prose published within explore scenarios that are strange and surreal—fantasies that respond to the world’s hectic reality. It’s giving weird, it’s giving meaningful, it’s giving unhinged.
→ Acceptance rate: 5.13% → Pay: $5 → Genres: Flash fiction up to 1,000 words; fiction up to 3,500 words; and poems no longer than 50 lines.
Exposed Bone | #uncanny and utterly charming
→ Why it made the list: I love me some good branding, and Exposed Bone’s website has that in spades. But more than that, the editors here—”two dumbasses who sold their souls to the literary journal demons in college”—are committed to uplifting disenfranchised and underrepresented writers. Work published in Exposed Bone is sly, weird, and charming, and the magazine intentionally seeks writing that destroys expectations and shoves at barriers. And, and! Each issue is published both digitally and in print.
→ Acceptance rate: 3% → Pay: None → Genres: Fiction and creative nonfiction, up to 3,500 words. Exposed Bone also publishes poetry, up to two pages.
If you liked this, you will also like this month’s workshop. Come through!
Her debut album, Songs in A Minor? Anyone?
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Thank you! Do you have a process for Lit mags to submit calls for submission?