One Story
They publish one short story per issue. They want literary fiction; “We are looking for stories that leave readers feeling satisfied and are strong enough to stand alone.” They accept translations, as well. Regarding reprints, if a story has been published in print outside of North America, it will be considered. Apart from cash payment, authors get 25 contributor copies.
Deadline: 31 May 2022
Length: 3,000-8,000 words
Pay: $500
Details here and here.

Contemporary Verse 2
This quarterly literary journal publishes poetry and critical writing about poetry, including interviews, articles, essays, and reviews. They also welcome poetry submissions in French, as well as translation projects, including both French to English and English to French. Also, “Unsolicited overseas contributors (from outside of Canada and the USA) whose fee is $40.00 or less (one poem or review) will receive only their two contributor copies as payment.”
Deadline: 31 May 2022
Length: Up to 6 pages for poetry; varies for others
Pay: $30/poem, $50-$100 for interviews and articles, $40-$150 for essays, and $50-$80 for reviews
Details here and here.
(And Poet Lore welcome all types of poems, including long poems and sequences, and translations. Send up to 5 poems. They now pay $50/poem. The deadline is 31 May 2022. Details here and here.)

Prairie Fire
This Canadian magazine publishes fiction (short fiction, excerpts from longer works), nonfiction (articles, creative nonfiction, editorials, essays, and memoir, as well as other prose – interviews, profiles, correspondence, notes, plays, scripts, etc.), and poetry.
Deadline: 31 May 2022
Length: Up to 10,000 words for prose; up to 6 poems
Pay: $0.10/word up to CAD250 for fiction and nonfiction, varies for other prose; CAD40 for poetry
Details here (guidelines) and here (pay rates).
(–Also, Cincinnati Review is accepting fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translations, and queries for drama. Their submission window opens beginning May and closes 31 May or until filled; submissions usually fill up quickly and close within a few days. Pay is $25/page of prose and $30/page of poetry.)

Escape Pod
This magazine, from the Escape Artists suite, publishes science fiction online and in podcast format. They also accept translations, as well as reprints.
Deadline: 31 May 2022
Length: 1,500-6,000 words (longer for reprints – see guidelines)
Pay: $0.08/word
Details here (guidelines) and here (schedule).
(Other podcast markets from the Escape Artists suite are:
— Cast of Wonders, publishing YA speculative fiction, open for its Banned Books Week theme until 14^th May 2022, see sub-theme details in the submission portal here;
— PseudoPod, open for horror reprints until 1 August, see the submission portal here; and
— PodCastle, which will open for a special issue, Indigenous Magic, during July – fantasy stories “that center Black, Brown, and Indigenous cultures, histories, belief systems, philosophies, and perspectives”, see their announcement here.
These magazines pay $0.08/word for original fiction, and $20-100 for reprints.)

Dark Void Magazine
This is a science fiction horror magazine. All stories have to take place off planet earth.
Deadline: 31 May 2022
Length: 3,000-4,000 words
Pay: $0.05/word
Details here.
(– And Dread Imaginings is open for quiet horror stories, pays $0.01/word for stories up to 4,000 words. The deadline is 31 May 2022.
— Also, award-winning speculative fiction magazine Uncanny has two submission windows; 1-15 May for novellas, and 16-30 May 2022 for short fiction. They pay $0.10/word.)

Bio: S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She can be reached here.

Work will be published in the original language, as well as French and English translations.

Interpret is a print and electronic journal. You can read the online version of past issues here to get a feel for what they publish and how they present it. The print version currently available online or in three bookstores.

They ask that fiction submissions be no more than 2,000 words in length. You can submit up to two stories, or three poems. They are only interested in unpublished original work. By published they mean work visible on any website, except for personal social media accounts. Attach a 20-word, third-person bio. They accept simultaneous submissions but ask that you notify them right away if your work is accepted elsewhere.

All submissions must be made via email. Please go here to learn more.

Lion Hudson is an imprint of SPCK Group, which bills itself as “More than a publisher. More than a charity.’” SPCK is the largest Christian publisher in the UK. They describe themselves as being passionate about turning the tide of secularization.

Lion Hudson describes itself as “publish(ing) books and other media for children and adults to help you grow in your Christian faith. We want to see literature that challenges, encourages, and leads people to God, whatever their background. Our titles span accessible books that reflect a Christian worldview suitable for a general audience, resources for Christian families, individuals, and communities, to academic works for theological study.”

They appear to have good distribution within the UK and they also have good cover design. They have published many established authors.

They have six imprints, which you can learn about here. Each of the imprints has a different focus. Note that they state Lion Fiction is new titles in 2021. It’s not clear if that remains true in 2022.

The titles they are currently acquiring will not be published for two years, which is not unusual with larger publishing houses.

They receive around 400 submissions a year. They publish many fewer titles than that, and many of the titles they publish are acquired through commissioning authors (where they approach authors, not the other way around).

To learn more or to submit, go here.

We’ve also received many emails that involve slurs, accusations about IQs, and general assertions that if we make errors when it comes to grammar or punctuation, that we can’t be trusted to talk about writing all. Typos and minor errors are presented as a moral failing, or a fundamental error undermining our ability to provide information to writers.

Now this isn’t exclusively aimed at Authors Publish. Writing culture on the internet has a firm foundation of grammar judgment from memes on up. These judgments are often used to silence English language learners, writers with learning disabilities, and other individuals. In an era where people are increasingly typing on phones ruled by the fickleness of auto correct, and where the rules of grammar and English are actively shifting in terms of culture and technology, things are slowly changing.

But there’s still this underlining assumption, sometimes implied, sometimes stated, that in order to be a great writer you have to have a great grip on spelling, grammar, etc. That this is the most important factor to becoming a writer.

I’m going to be honest here, under that definition, I’m never going to be a great writer, or even a good one. When my learning disabilities were first caught in second grade, a grade I was actively failing, the idea of being a writer was impossibly far from my mind. Even after lots of tutoring, treatment, effort, and technological help, I still struggled with aspects of writing in high school and university, which I attended with the help of accessibility services.

Although accessibility services provided their help at a cost (although not a financial one), many of the people that worked there could be judgmental. One called me an idiot on more than one occasion, and another said, when I told them I was applying to graduate school, “What’s the point? I’ve read your file. You aren’t getting in anywhere.”

But I did get into graduate school, and I really thrived there, even though judgment was still on the cards.

My ability to write clean, error-minimal text has actually really increased during the nine years I’ve contributed to Authors Publish. It’s had to improve in part because of the sheer volume of text I write on a daily basis. It’s still far from perfect.

But this isn’t just a personal story, or just about disability, it’s also about writers whose approach to English is different because English has different rules wherever you go in the world, in terms of geography, but also in terms of different cultures. Work written in African American Vernacular English should not be dismissed, for example.

Because often it’s not just the writer’s ability that is being dismissed, but more importantly the meaning those words carry. This causes a lot of harm.

At Authors Publish, we’ve always prioritized research and fact-checking in terms of publishers and literary journals, over finding minor spelling errors. Our copy editor prioritizes facts over spelling errors, and for that we are forever grateful for her. So to hear the validity of the work we do dismissed for this reason is particularly frustrating.

It’s important to know the rules of grammar, proofread your work, and edit to the best of your abilities, but it’s ultimately more important to get those words out into the world. As long as people can understand your basic meaning, you are on the right track. Errors exist even in the more proofread text, and spotting them does not make you the better writer (which doesn’t mean I don’t feel a moment of glee when I spot a typo in The New Yorker – I very much do!).

Because of the amount of emails I receive about errors, and the amount of vitriol that sometimes accompanied them, I was very nervous about starting to submit prose again. In fact, I brought it up with one of the agents who had read my full, and she said that my manuscript was one of the more error-free she’d encountered, and for her that was never  a reason to reject a book. Of course this isn’t always true, and lots of work is rejected because of errors.

So this isn’t a call to embrace errors, or to stop proofreading your work so much (I proofread my own constantly), or to ignore the apps that exist to help (ProWritingAid is my favourite), but to accept that errors do exist, and aren’t a larger mark against someone, and their cognitive abilities.