Our Call for Submissions to the House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature, Volume 4 is now CLOSED. 

For your reference:

What we look for in Fiction – HOZ is looking for literature that explores possibilities for the future. We want challenging short stories that are character driven, that reimagine the world and our place in it. We are looking for: BIPOC authors, feminist authors, LGBTQ2S authors, radical authors, authors who experiment. Concepts that thrill us: transhumanism, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, new systems, resistance, activism, queer perspectives, feminist perspectives, nature.

We are not interested in stories that concern the reinvention of empire, rehashing of old narratives, or excessive violence. We entertain all genre based stories so long as they concern the future and relate to our current theme. That said, we are looking for the best speculative fiction stories, so if you think you have something we might want, please consider sending it.

What we look for in Poetry

HOZ are looking for works of speculative poetry that imagine the future of the world, the future of nature, technology, and/or the human being. Any form of poetry is welcomed. Like our call for fiction we are very interested in radical, BIPOC, feminist, LGBTQ2S, and/or experimental poetry. 

Note: While many presses have been forbidding content created with AI, we are open to work that has used new technologies in the composition. However, we’re not interested in material that has been generated straight from ChatGPT (We will know!) Your story or poem has to fit the criteria outlined above. If you have used AI programs in writing your story or poem, please describe your process.

The HOZ journal is published as a print and ebook, and journals may be bound together into semi-annual collections.

We ask for non-exclusive, worldwide, serial rights to your work for both electronic and print.

No simultaneous submissions, but expect to hear back from us within 8 weeks of the deadline.

We do consider previously published work, but we do not consider reprints that are currently available for free online.

We pay $25 CND for poems and between $50 and $75 CND per short story.