Submission Guidelines

Fiction

Submissions for our Historical Fantasy issue are open until 30th April 2024.

Submissions for our Summer issue are open until May 31st 2024.

Non-fiction

Submissions for pitches are open on a rolling basis. You can submit you pitch via email; please send us your pitch at hello@tasavvurnama.com, but please go through this page for information on format and what we’re looking for first!

Fiction

Minimum 1,000 words, maximum 5,000 words.

Non-fiction Pitches

Minimum 250 words to maximum 500 words. Commissioned pieces are usually around 2,000 words depending on the topic.

Fiction

We pay 2.5 cents per word for stories up-to 5,000 words.

Non-fiction

We pay a flat rate of $100 for commissioned pieces.

Fiction

Give us your dreamscapes and nightmares, your soaring fantasies, your futuristic miasmas. Give us also your unstructured ramblings, where a story exists at the edges, dripping with lush, brilliant prose. We are not sticklers for the usual 3-act, 5-act structures, because great storytelling is so much more than that. So send us your lores written in reverse, written in verses, written in the form of email exchanges across multiverses, or haphazard POVs. Which is not to say we won’t accept a story with a usual structure. A good hero’s journey is a good hero’s journey. But if you’re doing that, take chances, and twist it!

Non-fiction

While we are welcome to any pitches you may have that pertain to South Asian spec fic in any manner, we are particularly interested in publishing the following type of work:

  • Critical essays of South Asian speculative fiction, such as through a feminist, queer, and/or post-colonial lens
  • Translations of non-English spec fic stories from South Asia (both traditional and contemporary)
  • Deep dives into the speculative fiction traditions of different regions of South Asia, particular under-represented regions.

Fiction

Please follow the manuscript format.

  • Use 12 Pt. Font, Double Spaced, and any font which is easily readable. Eg. Times New Roman, Arial, Cambria, etc.
  • Mention your word count at the top
  • Content warnings are appreciated and should appear at the top after word counts if they are applicable to your piece
  • Your full address isn’t necessary, but we would like to know where you are located
  • File types we accept: ODT/DOC/DOCX/PDF formats
  • Please name your files to match the following example or something similar: Sultana’s Dream by Begum Rokeya

Non-fiction

We’re looking to understand the concept behind your piece and see whether it’s a good fit for us, so please give us a clear outline that explains the trajectory of your piece, any sources you may reference, and any other relevant information. If you’re familiar with academic work, think of it as submitting an abstract.

If your pitch is accepted, we will commission you to write your complete piece.

Other things to note:

  • Please mention your proposed title, your name, email, and word count of your pitch in your file
  • Please make sure to add your name in the file name, e.g. A Case For Thieves by Ali Baba
  • Please do not submit complete pieces, we only accept pitches for non-fiction.

There’s no topic that’s strictly taboo for us, but anything that contains the following is a hard pass from us.

  • Needless animal cruelty
  • Violence/hate speech against minorities
  • Gratuitous violence and sex
  • Submissions from non-South Asian authors writing stories that have no connection to South Asia or neighboring regions.

Our definition of South Asia is not restricted to traditional geographical terms and we welcome authors from neighboring regions and diaspora communities to submit too. We also highly encourage authors from traditionally under-represented communities to submit, such as but not restricted to: Women, LQBTQIA+ identifying, BIPOC, people with disabilities, religious and/0r ethnic minorities. If you are from one or more such community, we encourage you to please mention it in your email.

However, please do not submit to us if you are not from any BIPOC community—Tasavvur is a magazine dedicated to publishing authors of South Asian origin and other BIPOC author, so we’ll have to turn you down as we’re not the market for you.

If you are unsure of whether you’re eligible to submit, feel free to get touch with us! You can find us on Twitter (@tasavvurnama) or email us (hello@tasavvurnama.com).

Submission FAQs

How to Submit: We currently only accept submissions through the form on our website. Please do not email us your submission. If you email us your submission, there is a high likelihood we’ll miss your submission or not accept it. Thank you.

Submission Type: Tasavvur only accepts short story submissions for short fiction. Please don’t send us flash fiction, poetry, or longer pieces; we’ll have to reject them even if we read them and love them.

Unpublished Work: We only accept submissions of original content, i.e. never published before, not even on blogs.

Simultaneous Submissions: We accept simultaneous submissions, however if your piece is accepted elsewhere before we get in touch with you, please let us know!

Multiple Submissions: Only one submission per author per submission cycle please.

Resubmissions: Please do not resubmit a previously rejected story unless we have sent you a Revise & Resubmit (R&R).

Please feel free to keep your cover letter brief. Feel free to mention whether you fit into our Diversity statement in any way, or to tell us about past publications (if any), mention any content warnings for your submission. Other than that, please do not explain your submission in your cover letter. Thank you!

Tasavvur aims to reprint a spec-fic story by a South Asian author in every issue. We are especially interested in reprinting stories that may not be available online yet. If you think you have a piece that qualifies, feel free to email us at submit@tasavvurnama.com

When you submit a piece or pitch to us, you will receive a confirmation email. We send out confirmation emails on Saturdays. If you do not receive a confirmation email from us within 14 days, please reach out on submit@tasavvurnama.com or resubmit via our form.

Other than that, we send out decisions roughly a month after our submissions close. So if our submissions are closing on June 30th, expect to hear back by July 30th or so (if not earlier). If you submitted a piece to us and didn’t hear back a decision, please reach out to us! Sometimes things get lost in cross-dimensional travel 🙂 Also, since the South Asian spec fic scene is still developing and a lot of the authors who submit to us are fresh writers, we do our best to offer some level of feedback with each rejection.

Frequently Asked Questions

We did a handy Twitter thread about our submission which you can see here. If you have any further questions about our submissions, feel free to reach out to us via email (hello@tasavvurnama.com) or social media.

Submit To Our Historical Fiction Issue!

Submissions close April 30th!

Submit To Our Summer Issue

Submissions close May 31st!