Submissions


Twisted Moon is currently not taking submissions.

Twisted Moon is a magazine of erotic, romantic and sensual speculative poetry. We want your tales of naked witches dancing by moonlight, the smell of your ghost lover's skin, the whispered memories of dying stars as they yearn across galaxies, or the invisible hand of the market as it enters you whole. We want that poem you read to your lover over the phone just to hear their breath catch.

What We Are Looking For

We want your best speculative poetry of an erotic, romantic or sensual nature.

We actively encourage poets of all sexualities, genders, disabilities, ages, backgrounds, etc, to submit your work, especially if the poem is informed by the way you experience the world.

We strongly encourage submissions from poets of non-Anglo/Western European cultures and work steeped in their own speculative and folkloric traditions. We would especially love to see work from Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander poets.

We are interested in seeing poems depicting kink and other non-traditional relationships structures and sexual exploration.

We welcome poems with any of these elements by anyone who feels inspired to write them. Bodies, sexual and sensual affairs, sexuality, and the ways in which we experience desire are vast and varied. Surprise us. Catch us off guard. Send us something we’ll be thinking about days after reading it.

What We Are NOT Looking For

Prose. We are not accepting short or long form fiction at this time. Prose-poetry is welcome, but please keep in mind that short stories with creative line breaks do not a poem make.

Non-consent & fetishisation. For the purposes of this publication, rape is not erotic. Children are not erotic. People of colour are not erotic simply by virtue of being people of colour. Racial/sexual slurs are not erotic.

Explicit porn. The erotic and the explicit often overlap and we look forward to walking that line with you through your submissions. We are all grown-ups here. You are encouraged to make us blush, gasp, and sigh, but we are more interested in the shapes and shadows than the play-by-play.

Gore. Horror is a fascinating genre and if you have poems relating to monsters, the occult, and/or themes of a gothic nature, we would love to see them. We are less keen to read torture-porn.

Fan-fiction. At least one of our editors has been known to lovingly rework her Star Trek fanfic into anonymized speculative fiction, and you are welcome to do the same to your own. The guideline to keep in mind is that if we can name the characters after you’ve filed off the serial numbers, we won’t consider the poem.

How To Submit

Send your poems in individual .doc, .docx or .rtf attachments to submissions @ twistedmoonmag.com. Please make sure each poem is attached as a separate document. We don’t mind how you format your submissions, as long as we can read it without a headache - 12 pt Arial, Times New Roman or similar standard font preferred.

Please send no more than 3 poems per reading period, contained within only one email. While we will accept longer poems if they blow us away, we are less likely to accept poems over 100 lines.

Please do not include any identifying information in the attachment (such as your name) or your submission will not be considered.

Please provide a cover letter in the body of the email and use “Submission: [Poem name]” as the subject line.

We encourage you to include up to 50 words about yourself. If your background or personal attributes are relevant to your poem, we encourage you to mention this.

We do not accept simultaneous submissions or reprints, unless solicited. Please do not resend poems previously rejected by us (even if they have been reworked) unless requested.

We aim to respond as quickly as possible and guarantee that we will be in touch whether or not your poetry is selected. Please query us if we haven't replied four weeks after the submission period closes.

Payment

Payment is USD$10 per published poem at a flat rate, and it is our goal to increase this in future. Payment will be made by PayPal only.

Further Questions?

For any further information please email us at submissions @ twistedmoonmag.com with the subject line “Question” and your question in the body of the email. We will try our best to get back to you with reasonable speed.