We accept unsolicited submissions via Submittable.
We pay, upon publication, $75 per piece regardless of length. We request exclusive worldwide English language rights to publish in the Forge Literary Magazine, an online journal, for a period of one (1) month, after which all rights revert to the author. Authors outside the U.S. must be able to receive payment via PayPal. Please note that our acceptance to publication time is currently four to six months.
Free submissions open on the 1st of each month. If there is no free link, we’ve hit our quota. We occasionally close tip-jar submissions to catch up with reading. (Exceptions include September, when we run our contest, and December, when we are closed.)
We prefer stories under 3,000 words but will consider up to 5,000 words. We love flash and micro!
About the Journal
The Forge Literary Magazine was founded by volunteers from the Fiction Forge, an international online writers’ forum, which counts amongst its members and alumni winners of numerous literary awards, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, O. Henry Prize, the Bridport Prize, the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Pinch Literary Award in Fiction. Former members’ novels have been published by Bloomsbury, Chatto & Windus, Sceptre, Headline and Little, Brown. Our all-volunteer staff shares editorial duties equally, we pay our contributors, and our taste is wide-ranging and eclectic. The Forge Literary Magazine is a project of Forge Literary Press, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (tax ID: 82-0910097) incorporated in the state of California. We nominate our pieces for Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories, Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfictions. Questions? Please email us.