Okay, so calling it a party may be pushing it, but it’s been over three years since we have had an open call or asked for emailed submissions, so there is a renewed excitement here. And during this pandemic/quarantine era, I thought it would be great to find some new writers and welcome them into our Future Tense family.

Now, what am I looking for?

Well, if you’ve read other Future Tense books you might have a good idea about what excites me. It could be personal essays, short stories, a novella, memoir, flash fiction, poetry, humor, some kind of mixed genre, or a even a full-length novel. Our history of working with game changers like Chelsea Hodson, Wendy C. Ortiz, Tatiana Ryckman, Shane Allison, Genevieve Hudson, May-Lan Tan, Gary Lutz, Myriam Gurba, Chelsea Martin, Elissa Washuta, and others is one we’re very proud of, and we can’t wait to find our next stars.

Writers of color, LGBTQ authors, and people from other groups who are underrepresented in the literary landscape are especially encouraged to submit. There is no submission fee.

Note: We tend to be less excited about books on politics, self-help, children’s or YA, religion, and genre-ish books (sci-fi, thrillers, horror, graphic novels).

On word count: I tend to like shorter books, so if your manuscript is longer than 50,000 words, it may be a harder sell for me. So, for paperback releases: Send me your manuscript between 30k and 50k as a PDF please. If you’re interested in our Scout Book series, your manuscript should be between 6,000 and 7,500 words (these sweet chapbooks are 32-pages, so it probably can’t be more than that).

This submission window will be from now until October 1st, 2020. My wish is to find three amazing books that we can publish in the next two years. I will announce the accepted authors by the end of this year.

UPDATE: Our submission window is now closed. Thanks to the 200+ writers who sent us their work to consider.

(Note: Submissions and queries sent to us after October 1st, 2020 will not be considered.)