Fiction Submissions

Size limit: 6500 words

We are looking for fabulist flash fiction and short stories. We receive too many stories to read more than one from each writer during each submission period. We like stories that favor the unusual over the usual; we like stories that create a milieu where anything can happen. Stories can take the form of myth or fable. They can invent or suggest an unreal ambience or describe a realistic landscape gripped by a surreal or unexplained event.

We are fond of Calvino, South American Magical Realism, and Talmudic legends. Kafka and Orwell now and will forever totally rock. Some contemporary favorite reads you might have missed include “Flying Leap” by Judy Budnitz, “Carmen Dog” by Carol Emshwiller, “Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot” by Robert Olen Butler, “Wild Life” by Molly Gloss, “Serial Killer Days” by David Prill, “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A.S. Byatt, “ Riding the Red” by Nalo Hopkinson, “The Child Garden” by Geoff Ryman, and the “Interfictions” and “Polyphony” anthologies. The list of writers of stories we enjoy numbers in the thousands.

We accept simultaneous submissions if so noted, but request that you inform us immediately if your piece is accepted elsewhere. As a general rule we do not read previously published work, including work that appears on the web or in electronic format. Please send one fiction submission during each submission period, and we ask that writers wait for several weeks beyond the end of the reading period before querying about the status of your submission.

We request first North American Serial Rights and exclusive rights for six months following publication. We request permission to publish an excerpt of your story on our website. We pay on publication ($10-25) for flash fiction to 2000 words and $50 for short story 2001-6500 words), plus 1 contributor copy and additional author copies at a 55% discount.

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Poetry Submissions

Size limit: limit of 100 lines

As poetry editor of Phantom Drift, I welcome your submissions. I must warn poets ready to submit beforehand, however, that I have forsworn a promise to favor poetry of a sinister bent. Phantom Drift prefers poetry composed in the speculative, new fabulist tradition. As editor, I will welcome work readers might label new weird, slipstream, and/or fantastic. Poetry that demonstrates what Roger Caillois has referred to as “the impression of irreducible strangeness,” and that inspires what Franco-Bulgarian structuralist critic Tzevetan Todorov characterized as a ''duration of uncertainty'' between strange and marvelous explanations in the mind of the reader will be especially prized here. In part, Phantom Drift exists because its editors wish to found a journal devoted to work that shatters or valuably distorts reality, whether this means surrealism, magical realism, fantastique, or bizarrerie. We value writing whose imagination is unafraid to shift shape, writing that generates unique alternatives to and uncharted voyages away from conventional realism.

Apart from these considerations, content, language, and form remain quite wide open. Submit sonnet, abcedarius, prose poem, or lipogram. Send gothic, supernatural, steam punk, or science fiction. If you possess unabashedly strange, unpublished work which shows such unusual tendencies as these, Phantom Drift wants to see your work. Send us your weirdest verse in submissions of 3-5 poems, as well as a cover letter.

Payment is $10 per poem and 1 contributor copy. Additional author copies will be available for 55% discount.

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Non-Fiction

Size limit: 5,000 words

We are looking for essays on New Fabulism (or the range of imaginative literature generally referred to as slipstream, new weird, magic realism, fabulist and a literature of the fantastic difficult to categorize). Essays can be academic or non-academic, personal or critical but must illuminate with originality, insight and intelligence work in this range of literature. Our preference is for work that presents a view of how this literature is so vital in gaining an understanding of inner experience throughout history and casts a light on what it means to be human. We're interested in features that focus on neglected or underappreciated authors whose work best exemplifies achievements in this arena. Critical studies and interviews are welcome. Examples from our first issue are Thomas E. Kennedy's essay, "Realism and Other Illusions" and Matt Schumacher's "Exploring The Haunted Palace: Gothic Warped Space, Phatasmogoria, and the Evolution of the Haunted House from Poe to Danielewski." Pays: $10 for reviews of approximately 500-1,000 words, $25 for short essays up to 2,000 words and $50 for feature essays, critical papers and interviews up to 5,000 words.

Visit our website at: http://www.wordcraftoforegon.com/pd.html and click on SUBMIT to upload on-line submissions. Nonfiction deadline has been extended to May 31st. Phantom Drift is a non-profit annual journal published by Phantom Drift Limited. For more information, contact David Memmott, Managing Editor, phantomdrifteditor@yahoo.com

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