Wednesday, June 18th 2025
Reckoning is an annual magazine that publishes speculative works on environmental justice. They’re accepting works for a special theme, It Was Paradise, for which they want works at the intersection of war and environmental justice. For this theme, they say, “In a world devastated by catastrophes, we need stories that confront these horrors. This is all out war on the planet, on life itself. War and conflict as viewed through the lens of environmental justice, are the themes for this volume of Reckoning. Probe into the heart of extinction, genocide, and climate crisis. Expose the exploitation of the earth. Show us how the world could be on the other side. Send us your stories of violence, imperialism, fascism, and resistance, of destruction, survival, and of triumph. Send us your creative writing about war and environmental justice. It Was Paradise is open for submissions now through the summer solstice, June 22, 2025, with tentative release scheduled for October.” Payment rate will be $0.15/word for prose for this call (send up to 15,000 words for creative nonfiction and up to 3,000 words for critical essays for this call – see their Moksha submission portal here), $75 per page for poetry and art. As always, we’re seeking submissions from Black, Brown, Indigenous, queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent, imprisoned, impoverished, and otherwise marginalized human beings from everywhere, but in particular for this issue, we will be prioritizing work by people with lived experience of war and conflict. We’ll continue to accept submissions to our communication-themed regular issue, Reckoning X, throughout. See details of this themed call here, general guidelines here, and submission system here and here.
(Reckoning is also reading regular submissions for Issue X themed around communication, deadline 22nd September 2025.)
Deadline: June 22nd, 2025
Thursday, September 17th 2020
They want creative writing (creative non-fiction, fiction, poetry) about
environmental justice. For prose their guidelines say, “For Reckoning 5, I want stories that elicit a sense of wonder about the
environment. We all know that biodiversity is endangered, but our hyper-urban
lifestyles are making us so out of touch with the natural world that it’s
sometimes easier to imagine complete environmental destruction than to look at
the environment we still do have. ... I will consider exceptional stories that
fall somewhat outside of that theme, as long as they address the topic of
environmental justice.” Their general guidelines say, “Fiction preferably at least a
tiny bit speculative, nonfiction preferably more creative than journalistic,
poetry tending towards the narrative and preferably with some thematic heft,
art leaning away from the pulpy heavily towards the political. But the heart of
what we want is your searingly personal, visceral, idiosyncratic understanding
of the world and the people in it as it has been, as it is, as it
will be, as it could be, as a consequence of humanity’s relationship with the
earth.” They actively seek work from Indigenous writers and artists, writers
and artists of color, queer and transgender writers and artists, and anyone who
has suffered the consequences, intended or otherwise, of dominant society’s
systemic disconnect with and mistreatment of the natural world. They also
welcome writing in Spanish, French or Swedish for potential translation, and
work already translated into English, for which they pay the same rate to both
author and translator. Pay is 8c/word, up to 20,000 words for prose. Details here
(general guidelines) and here
(submission portal).
Deadline: 22 September 2020