Call for Fiction and Poetry Submissions is Temporarily Closed

Call for Visual Art is Open

Calling all historical fiction writers and visual artists

From mammoth hunters slipping on an icy land bridge, to a dying Mbudye memory-man of the Kingdom of Luba, to a destitute mother moving her family to new opportunities, to rumors of a Y2K disaster—these stories from history, and more, call out to be told.

There are few places in the literary landscape today for short historical fiction. Sundial Magazine provides a place for new voices in historical fiction. 

For historical fiction:

• Any and all short fiction set before Jan. 1, 2000 is welcome: short stories up to 20,000 words, flash, graphic, poetry, and any and all historical fiction genres in between. Novel excerpts accepted. 

• Submissions must never have been published anywhere, even your own blog.

  • New exception, as of 5/5/2021: If your historical fiction was published by The Magazine of History and Fiction, The Copperfield Review, or another defunct magazine, we will consider re-publishing it. Simply let us know in the submission email which magazine it was in. 

• Stories set outside of North America and Europe with primarily BIPOC main characters will be prioritized. Please don't send any white savior stories. We aspire to publish stories depicting humanity in all its diverse glory; BIPOC and LGBTQ+ characters and authors are very welcome.

• Please, no speculative elements. There are a number of wonderful places for spec fic today. Any speculative element must be able to be explained in rational, non-speculative ways. 

• We will not publish nor read works which were written, in whole or in part, by any artificial intelligence. Do not submit works if the writing process involved any artificial intelligence.

• Please, no alternative history.

• No pornography or erotica. Tasteful romances are welcome, but please keep everything PG-13.

• No gratuitous violence. 

• We take first time rights.

• Since we cannot publish anything protected by copyright, please do not submit any fan fic. There is one exception: you may submit original historical fiction inspired by fiction not covered by copyright. Think Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which explores the world of Jane Eyre, a book in the public domain.

• We cannot publish lyrics to any song that is not in the public domain. It doesn't matter how important that pop song is to your character. The copyright holder could sue us. You may use the titles of songs not in the public domain, and describe the lyrics of the song.

• Attach submissions as a .doc or .docx file in an email to sundialhistfic@gmail.com. Include in the email your byline, the title of your story, and whether or not it has ever been published anywhere, including on the internet. You may include a 100 word author's biography written in the third person, or you may wait to hear if your piece is accepted before submitting the bio. We will try to respond to shorter pieces in 30 days; longer pieces may take up to 3 months.

• Simultaneous submissions strongly discouraged. Multiple fiction submissions not allowed. Please email one story at a time (for poetry, you may email up to 3 poems at a time in one document).

• We are not picky about formatting in submissions, but as a general rule don't use the space bar to indent your paragraphs.

• We love speech that captures the way people really talk ("so I axed her"), but we're not much for eye dialects.

• We are sorry but we cannot pay you for your writing at this time. We hope to in the future, but for now we can only offer the chance to share your work with an audience.

For visual art:

• We provide original illustrations with some of our fiction. To be considered as an illustrator for Sundial, please email a representative portfolio to sundialhistfic@gmail.com. Please include the name you wish for us to use in our publication.

• If we accept you as an illustrator, we will email you short fiction or a poem to read and provide one illustration for. We will allow you wide creative freedom in your illustration of the story, but we reserve the right to request changes or reject any one illustration.

• We love all types of art: representational, stylized, abstract; paintings, webcomics, sculpture, embroidery. 

• We are sorry but we cannot pay you for your illustrations at this time. We hope to in the future, but for now we can only offer the chance to share your art with an audience.

We currently do not publish "issues"; instead we publish new work as soon as it is ready.

When we receive your submission, we will send an acknowledgement email letting you know we received it. If you do not receive our acknowledgement email, your submission has been lost in the intertubes or is perhaps in our Spam folder.  If you do not receive our acknowledgement email, perhaps try sending your submission from a different email.

Editor-in-Chief: Ashley N.E. Murphy 

Poetry Editor: Anthony Mason Murphy

Contact: sundialhistfic@gmail.com

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