Start the new year right: Seven paying markets for your short stories, novellas, poetry, and essays, and one big contest

Note: Don't ever miss a post on Quick Brown Fox. Fill in your email in the Follow Brian by Email box to the right under my bio, and get each post delivered to your Inbox. ~Brian

Shifters United seeks paranormal romance or urban fantasy novellas, 20,000 to 35,000 words. Pays royalties. 

For January 15, 2019 deadline: Shifter Mix-Ups. Both urban fantasy and paranormal romance welcome.

For March 15 deadline: Motorcycle Club Shifters. Give us your shifters who are in a motorcycle club or who want to be. We're looking for big, bad alphas and love a variety of shifter types. Paranormal romance is welcome. The hotter the better.

For May 15 deadline: Cowboy Shifters. Rough and ready, whether on the range or in the city. We want to see your hot cowboys who also just happen to be shifters. Paranormal Romance is welcome. Keep it spicy, mi amigos!

For July 15 deadline: Surf n' Turf. Let's see our shifters on a beach somewhere soaking up the sun. Or perhaps they're ocean creatures who come on shore to find their true mate. We want to see your passionate love affairs between creatures of the ocean and creatures of the land.

Guidelines here.

Rattle poetry magazine seeks poetry of any style, length, or subject, but must have first appeared on Instagram and not yet appeared in print. Pays $100. 

Deadline: January 15, 2019. Guidelines here.

Ruminate magazine publishes stories, poetry and art to teach us to slow down, to listen, and to pay attention, awakening our hearts to ourselves and to one another. Ruminate welcomes submissions that both subtly and overtly engages faith from all the world religions.  Pays $20/page of poetry (maximum of $80 per poem), $20/page for visual art pieces, and $20/400 words for prose.

Deadline for poetry: January 15, 2019, then will accept submissions for Janet B McCabe Poetry Prize – $20 entry fee, $1,500 prize.

Deadline for nonfiction: May 31, then will accept submissions for VanderMey Nonfiction Prize.

Deadline for visual art: April 14, then will accept submissions for Kalos Visual Art Prize.

“Readers Ruminate, personal notes, 300 words or less, currently open for submissions.

Deadline for William Van Dyke Short Story Prize: Feb 18. Stories 5,500 words or less; $30 entry fee, $1,500 prize. Then will open for general fiction submissions Feb 19 – Aug 14.

The Ruminate blog is open for submissions year-round.

Guidelines here.

Helios Quarterly Magazine publishes science-fiction, fantasy and horror, fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and art. Pays 3 cents (U.S.) per word for the first 1,500 words and 1 cent/word over that word count for for short stories and 25 cents/line for poetry. 

Reading periods: January 1 – 15 for March issue; April 1 – 15 for June issue; July 1 – 15 for September issue; and October 1 – 15 for December issue. Guidelines here.

Wizards in Space “is much more than a literary magazine. It’s a community and a support system. It’s a platform for the voiceless to speak out into the void. It’s smart, refreshing, and inspiring. It’s people celebrating each other while creating magic together, bright stars shining in a constellation.” Publishes poems, short stories, creative nonfiction essays, and illustrations.” For Issue 4, they “particularly interested in themes of space and place, things that change and things that don’t, the spots we share and the ones we keep to ourselves. Where do you go when you need peace? Where do you go when you need to be loud?”etc. Pays $30. 

Deadline: January 15, 2019. Guidelines here. 

Outlook Springs is a literary journal devoted to fiction, poetry, and nonfiction tinged with the strange – seeks “weird, wobbly wordwork.” Pays $10 for poems, $25 for prose. 

Deadline: January 15, 2019. Guidelines here.

Prairie Fire is a Canadian literary journal. “In a typical issue you will find a wide range of writing, including excerpts from a work-in-progress, a thoughtful essay or memoir, literary humour, lots of poetry and fiction, and sometimes something more experimental.”

Currently seeks fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and poetry on the topic of work. Pays  10 cents/word for prose; $40 per poem. 

Deadline: January 18, 2019. Guidelines here.

There's less than three weeks left to enter the Disquiet Prize for writing in any genre. Three winners will be published on Granta.com (fiction), NinthLetter.com (nonfiction) or The Common (poetry). One grand prize winner will receive a full scholarship, accommodations, and travel stipend to attend the ninth annual DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon taking place June 23-July 5, 2019. Runners-up and other outstanding entrants will also be considered for financial aid. Additional scholarships available.

Read the contest guidelines or apply at Submittable.

Deadline: January 10, 2019. Reading fee: $15

See Brian Henry’s schedule here, including writing workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in Algonquin Park, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Georgetown, Georgina, Guelph, Hamilton, Jackson’s Point, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Saint John, NB, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.