For writers and artists

Submissions

Two calls are listed. Calls, Rights, and How to Submit are found here.

Open calls

Each window is printed as the call states it. These are our open and upcoming calls. We provide a small honorarium for accepted fiction; poetry is unpaid.

Annual Love Issue

Open now

Oct 1 – Oct 30, 2026

This call is for all our hopeless romantics. The ones who believe love can arrive in a moment and, quite frankly, those who say fuck love.
We call those folks hopelessly unromantic.
You're invited too.

We want the bliss and the heartache.
We want the erotic and the intellectual.
We want the love that saves us and the love we probably should have left alone.

We don't want black-and-white love. We want love that sits in gray. We want messy, complicated shades, and absolutely Black love.

Tell us about when the gay became straight and the straight became gay. Tell us about the ten men who boarded a rocket ship only to discover there are no women on Venus.

Give us strange love.
Give us bad luck.
Give us love that makes us cry.
Just give us love—however you understand it.

PS. We interpret love broadly. Romantic, platonic, familial, sexual, obsessive, lost, found, regretted, imagined... we could go on.

Genres: Fiction, Poetry & Visual Art
Length: Flash Fiction: Preferably 300–1.1K words. We may let you sneak a few extra words in. But don’t get cute.
Poetry: Submit up to two poems, no more than 40 lines each.
Visual Art: Submit up to three pieces.
Payment: We provide a small honorarium for fiction.
Publication: February 2027

Women Who Burn

Opens soon

Opens Nov 4 – Nov 27, 2026

The women on these pages exist across time, race, and social class. They have been suppressed, they have been loved, and they have been wronged. What they won’t do is surrender.

Women Who Burn is a collection of women at the edge of desire, of grief, of control, of themselves.

We want women who are messy, complicated, funny, furious, tender, selfish, sensual, reckless, calculating, joyful, grieving, hungry, even strange. Women making terrible decisions for perfectly understandable reasons. Women making the right decisions far too late. Women who leave. Women who stay. Women who want too much, feel too deeply, laugh too hard, or say the thing they were never supposed to say.

And yes, men can absolutely be in their lives. (Unless they wish it otherwise.)

Let them complicate things deliciously. Let them love these women well. Let them misunderstand them completely. Let them help. Let them hinder. Let them bumble through.

But by burning we don’t mean rage alone.

Burning is that heat smoldering beneath the surface. It makes these women laugh. It makes them ache. It makes them uncomfortable. It makes them want.

Give us desire, absurdity, obsession, reinvention, revenge, intimacy, liberation, contradiction.

Give us women who don’t realize that they are the fire until it’s mostly too late.

Above all, give us women who feel alive.

This is Neon & Smoke. By this time you know, we like to keep things smoky. (Someone once said, unruly.)

Women Who Burn is the second annual print anthology from Neon & Smoke, tentatively scheduled for publication May/June 2027 and online publication in April 2027.

Genres: Fiction, Poetry & Visual Art
Length: Flash Fiction: Preferably 500–1.5K words. We may let you sneak a few extra words in. But don’t get cute.
Poetry: Submit up to two poems, no more than 30 lines each.
Visual Art: Submit up to three pieces.
Payment: We provide a small honorarium for fiction.

Submit through Duosuma Our Duotrope listing

Duosuma is Duotrope's submission manager — the button above opens the form directly, no second click. If anything there contradicts a call above, the call above is the one we will honor — and tell us at neon@neonandsmoke.com so we can fix it.

Submission guidelines

Per-category terms (length, format, payment, reprints) are on the cards above. What follows applies to everything you send us.

What We’re Looking For

Neon & Smoke is a home for bold fiction. We’re especially drawn to:

Stories that move. Not just emotionally, but narratively. Give us stakes. Give us story.
Stories that mean. The kind where a sentence lands and you need to sit with it for a second.
Stories that sound. Bold voices. Quiet voices with teeth. Characters who command attention.
Stories that blend. They might wear the clothes of genre—revenge, horror, speculative—but underneath, they’re about something deeper: grief, identity, morality, transformation.
Fresh perspectives. We elevate marginalized voices, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and incarcerated writers—but we welcome all voices.
Unforgettable characters. Give us flawed humans (or monsters) navigating strange, beautiful, or broken worlds.
Emotional resonance. We love stories that linger—whether from laughter, heartbreak, terror, or awe.
Emotional range. Give us sorrow and joy. Stillness and chaos. Anger, love, weirdness, release. We want fiction that reflects the full spectrum of being alive.
Clarity with depth. We value accessibility. You don’t need to write for a panel of editors. Write for the reader who feels it in their chest.

What We’re Not Looking For

Fiction that relies on harmful stereotypes or gratuitous violence without narrative or emotional purpose
Work so abstract or insular that it leaves readers adrift—if the meaning is buried under a dozen metaphors and only visible to the writer or a lit journal editor, it’s probably not for us.
Stories that dwell in a single emotional register without transformation. We've read enough grief without movement, rage without reflection, or sorrow without spark.

Rights

For accepted work, we request

First North American Serial Rights
First Online Rights

All rights revert to the author or artist upon publication. We ask for credit as the original publisher if the work appears elsewhere in the future.

Optional Add-Ons

Expedited Response – $5

Want to hear back more quickly? Receive a response within 2–3 weeks by adding $5 at submission.

Note: Payment does not influence our decision to publish your work.

Feedback Fiction – $10

Curious how your story or poem landed with us?

For $10, receive a brief, personalized response that includes:

A summary of your work’s strengths and opportunities
Thoughts on how your submission landed with our editorial team
Light commentary from the editor who reviewed your work

This is not a developmental edit or line-by-line critique—it’s a candid reflection from our editorial lens. Choosing this option does not influence our publication decision.

How to Submit

Submit your work through our online portal: Duotrope.
Include a brief cover letter (no bio required unless you'd like to include one).
Expect a response in 6–8 weeks, unless you’ve selected expedited review.
We evaluate submissions holistically based on character depth, plot, pacing, genre fusion, voice, and impact.

We can’t wait to read what you’ve been working on.

Check out our stories to see what we like, and then bring us your best misfits.

Because we are Neon & Smoke, half-genre/always lit.

Expect a response in 6–8 weeks, unless you’ve selected expedited review. Submissions go through our Duotrope listing.

Before you send

Read what we have already published before you send. Start with the archive, or the current issue.