Submissions for our Spring 2025 Contest Issue will open on December 21, 2024, and will close on March 30, 2025.
Theme: The serpent goddess.
This contest is reserved for female-identifying and gender fluid writers only.

Get ready—2025 will be the Year of the Snake. As Pamela Colman Smith was good friends with Bram Stoker and illustrated his book, The Lair of the White Worm, I’m looking for flash fiction 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, and feminine power. Make this your own.

We hope to choose a first place winner and a finalist for each category, flash fiction and poetry.
First place will receive $100, and the finalist will receive $50, payable via Paypal, and both will receive publication.

For more about my editorial aesthetic, read below, and read one of our free back issues.

For this call, we will accept flash fiction of up to 500 words, or poems up to 50 lines.
One fiction piece per submission, or up to 3 poems per submission.

For ethical reasons, the following entrants will be disqualified: friends of the editor, G.G. Silverman, as well as business associates (I define "business associates" as: if I have paid you to do a service, or if you have given me any promotional consideration for my writing, or paid me for a service), and students who have taken a long form course with me (longer than one day). If you have only taken a brief, one-day workshop with me, I don't consider you to be a long-term student and you may enter.

I no longer read entries blind. Please include your contact info on your document.

Multiple submissions are allowed.
Please, no simultaneous submissions.
A nonrefundable entry fee of $10 will apply.

TO SUBMIT, GO HERE.

After submitting via our Stack Portal, send your fee via Paypal to thegreensheaf@outlook.com
Please include your Stack Portal submission number in your Paypal payment notes for verification.

We reserve the right to not choose a winner or finalist if we don't receive the quality we're looking for.

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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