Travel between the worlds is again possible—our submissions portal has appeared once more! It wants your best fantasy tales, so if you have a short story you’d like us to read, please take a look at our guidelines then visit our submissions portal to submit. We accept both original fiction and reprints under 6,000 words.
We’re looking forward to reading your work.
Best,
Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali and Jen R. Albert, PodCastle Co-Editors
and the editorial team
Many thanks to everyone who sent us their work in 2016–we’ve received an outstanding number of submissions this year and we’re impressed and delighted by the fine quality of the stories we’ve read. In order to give proper attention to the stories in queue, and to give the castle staff a much needed rest over the holidays, we will be closing to submissions on December 1. We expect to reopen our submissions portal in mid-January 2017.
Thank you for a great year!
All the Best,
Jen R. Albert and Graeme Dunlop
PodCastle Co-Editors
During the month of September, PodCastle will be looking for submissions to celebrate ARTEMIS RISING, a special month-long event across the Escape Artists podcasts featuring stories by women and nonbinary authors in genre fiction.
Stepping in as guest editor for our third annual ARTEMIS RISING event is PodCastle assistant editor Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali!
Summary
Who Can Submit
Anyone who identifies as a woman, to whatever degree that they do. Nonbinary authors are also welcome and encouraged to submit stories.
As always, we at PodCastle strongly encourage submissions from people of backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented or excluded from traditional fantasy fiction, including, but not limited to, people of color, LGBTQ authors, persons with disabilities, members of religious minorities, and people from outside the United States. Our goal is to publish fantasy that reflects the diversity of the human race, so we strongly encourage submissions from these or any other underrepresented groups.
What to Submit
Send in your best original fantasy fiction between 2,000 – 6,000 words.
You can send PodCastle one submission for ARTEMIS RISING. If we have another story under consideration already in the general submissions queue, we’d be happy to consider an additional story for ARTEMIS RISING.
While we’ll be accepting a limited number of stories for ARTEMIS RISING, all stories will be considered for regular PodCastle too.
How to Submit
Start writing now, and keep an eye out for a special ARTEMIS RISING Submittable portal. Submissions will be open for the month of September.
Thanks, and we look forward to reading your stories!
Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, Guest Editor
And the PodCastle team
We have pried open the jaws of our submissions portal once again and it’s hungry for more of your fantastic stories! If you’ve got a fantasy short story you’d like us to read, please take a look at our guidelines then visit our submissions portal to submit. We accept both original fiction and reprints under 6,000 words.
We’re looking forward to reading your work. Happy Submitting!
Best,
Graeme Dunlop and Jen R. Albert, PodCastle Co-Editors
and the editorial team
Greetings from the floating castle in the sky!
2016 has proved to be a particularly strong year for submissions. In order to give proper attention to all the stories we’ve received, we’ll be temporarily closed to new submissions beginning May 1. We expect to reopen our submissions portal in June 2016.
Thank you for your patience! We look forward to reading your stories.
Best,
Rachael K. Jones and Graeme Dunlop, PodCastle Co-Editors
and Editorial Staff
Artemis Rising is the month-long celebration of female and non-binary authors in genre fiction run across three Escape Artists podcasts PodCastle for fantasy, EscapePod for science fiction, and PseudoPod for horror.
This year we have commissioned a special art print by legendary illustrator Galen Dara. The print will be available for purchase through Society6 until March 31, 2016.
Galen likes monsters, mystics, and dead things. She has created art for Uncanny Magazine, 47North publishing, Skyscape Publishing, Fantasy Flight Games, Tyche Books, Fireside Magazine, Lightspeed, Lackington’s, and Resurrection House. She has been nominated for the Hugo, the World Fantasy Award, and the Chesley Award. When Galen is not working on a project you can find her on the edge of the Sonoran Desert, climbing mountains and hanging out with an assortment of human and animal companions. Her website is www.galendara.com plus you can find her on Facebook and Twitter @galendara.
In our first 2016 metacast, we present the Escape Artists (EA) stories that ran in 2015, which are eligible in the upcoming Hugo nomination season.
A quick plug. For us. All four EA shows – PodCastle, Pseudopod, Escape Pod and Cast of Wonders – are themselves eligible in the SEMIPROZINE Hugo category.
Not Fancast. Not Fanzine. SEMIPROZINE. Yes, the categories are confusing and often overlap. “Fancast” is traditionally dominated by commentary shows and sketch-based audio programs.
There’s an argument that we could split the shows and compete in multiple categories to increase our chances. We don’t think that benefits anyone. The division is artificial at best, and extremely difficult (at worst) to explain, given all four of our shows have harmonised pay rates and submissions policies. It would smack of gamesmanship, which doesn’t interest us.
Don’t get us wrong, we LOVED seeing PodCastle and Escape Pod on last year’s Hugo long lists, and we’d be honoured for any one of our shows to be a finalist.
But that’s a decision that rests solely in the hands of YOU, our fans and supporters.
(And just a note, Mothership Zeta doesn’t qualify this year because they’re too new.)
Below are links to some aggregation projects, where fans are building lists of those eligible in the various categories. They’re great tools, and we’d like to thank David Steffen for his efforts. We’ll also link to our Wikia page, containing links to all the eligible Escape Artists stories.
Please listen to this MetaCast for the Escape Artists entries!
After years of great service, Arri and Kimi – who run Poddisc for us – have decided to step away. So PodDisc, our CD fulfilment site, will be shutting down in early February.
That means two things. First, if you’re a PodDisc customer – and we know lots of you are, and thanks for that – now is your last chance to get caught up on any t-shirts or back catalogue you’re missing. PodDisc is happy to take your orders.
Second, for the next little while EA won’t have a fulfilment service. We’ve been looking into different options behind the scenes, both for physical products like t-shirts and prints and swag, and for digital distribution of our back catalog.
(Right now I’m imagining the White House Press Corps right after someone says the words “truth about the Moon Landings.”)
Don’t worry, the EA back catalogue will always be available for free on our websites. Like I said, different options and ideas are in the works, for approaches you’ve not seen before to the retail side of the company. Once we have something to announce, you’ll be the first to know.
Kind regards,
Alasdair Stuart
Owner, Escape Artists
Starting in 2016, PodCastle will make some significant changes to the rights we buy from authors, most notably the purchase of electronic rights to post the text of stories to our website. This is to clear up some ambiguity surrounding the eligibility of stories first published in audio for major awards and Year’s Best anthologies. Since we have begun paying pro rates for original stories, we want to make sure our authors receive the same consideration for these honors as those published at text-based zines.
Please see our Submissions Guidelines for more information, including links to full sample contracts.
At long last, we’re very excited to announce that PodCastle is now paying our narrators!
Standard rates for solo readings are $15 for flash fiction (<2000 words), and $30 for short stories (2000-6000 words). Rates vary for two-narrator readings, full cast readings, and longer works, and will be determined on a case-by-case basis, by the editors.
Have you ever wanted to narrate for PodCastle? Please head on over to our Narrator Audition Portal, and give us your best voice. We’d love to hear from you!
Those who have narrated for us in the past need not audition again; you’re already in our narrator database, and we’ll contact you directly when we have another reading we might like you to do.