Submissions for our Spring 2025 Awards Issue will open on or around December 21, 2024.
Theme: The serpent goddess.
This contest is reserved for female-identifying and gender fluid writers.

As Pamela Colman Smith was good friends with Bram Stoker and illustrated his book, The Lair of the White Worm, I’m looking for tales and poems that thematically explore the historic connection between goddesses and snakes. That said, I’m not looking for retellings of Bram’s novel, which is arguably his worst, and also has racist overtones. Instead, I want you to play with the symbolic imagery of snakes as it relates to goddess culture. Make this your own. For more about my editorial aesthetic, read below, and read one of our free back issues.

We will accept flash fiction of up to 500 words, or poems up to 50 lines.
An entry free of $10 will apply.

For future submissions calls, please check back here, follow our Facebook page, or subscribe to our newsletter.

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Please read carefully below for our editorial aesthetic, rights information, AI policy, and guidelines.

The aesthetic:
My editorial tastes mainly align with the original vision of The Green Sheaf: I love folklore, fairy tales, mythology, and the mystical. I also enjoy the speculative, the darkly fantastical, folk horror, the weird/numinous, the surreal/strange, the gothic, and magical realism/slipstream. Furthermore, I love poetic language, exquisite prose, and lush imagery. My favorite authors of short fiction include Angela Carter, K-Ming Chang, Carmen Maria Machado, Angela Buck, María Fernanda Ampuero, Agustina Bazterrica, Gwendolyn Kiste, Jamaica Kincaid, Sheree Renée Thomas, Nalo Hopkinson, Caroline Yoachim, Karen Russell, Ramona Ausubel, Kelly Link, Aimee Bender, Barbara Molinard, Leonora Carrington, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gabriel García Márquez, among others. I love the films of Robert Eggers, Federico Fellini, Tim Burton, and Guillermo del Toro. I’m also haunted by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Transport me with your words. 

AI Policy:
We will not accept AI-generated work.

Rights:
We request first North American serial rights—which will revert to you immediately on publication—and non-exclusive rights to archive your work electronically.

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