Hello readers, artists, patrons, and dear writers!

A limited-run print edition arrives in September. It’s low-key, grassroots, and we’re counting on you to spread the word, like always. If you want your name in it, read our general submission guidelines first. The fine print below is shorter than your drafts. We promise.

We remain picky about what we publish, since we’ve gotta keep up our awesome standards (of self-praise). No advertisers, no sponsors, no one to tell us what sells. So if your piece is outspoken, a little ill-behaved, insists on being read aloud, that’s good. That’s the frequency we’re on.

We love literature (shocking), but we love real writers more. We’ve had enough of LLM-flavoured cover letters that read like corporate memos in a trench coat. If you’ve spotted GPT’s signature move—”X is not this, but this”—congratulations, you’re cursed now too. Please don’t do it. And if your voice is raw enough, we’ll allow you an em dash or two. In other words: we appreciate an MFA (our senior editor survived one), but we aren’t looking for voices refined to the point of being beige.

What we’re accepting

Fiction & Poetry

• Follow the general guidelines
• Max 6,000 words (for fiction)
• Poetry: send a tight selection, not your entire life’s work (unless your life’s work is 3 poems and they’re perfect)

Humour & Cartoons (Restless Cases + Write-Wing)

• Max 1,500 words
• Satire, absurdity, sharp observational humour, topical cultural commentary with teeth
• Cartoons: send as high-res images/PDF; if there’s text, make it readable on print. We’re happy to help with captions. 

Essays / Non-fiction (this print cycle’s columns)

We’ll continue a rolling approach to essay columns in each edition. For this issue, we’re looking for:

• Armchair Arbiters: reviews of music, films, books, subcultures, internet oddities, sports, fashion—anything you can write about with conviction and charm.
• Culture Couch: cultural analysis, argument-driven essays, “why this matters,” big questions in everyday clothing
• Pages From A Diary: personal history, private obsessions, embarrassing tenderness, dark secrets (bring us the complicated, not the gratuitous)

Max 4,000 words for essays/non-fiction.

Forms / Hybrid

Writing that doesn’t know what shelf it belongs on (we love this):

• lyric essays, fragmented narratives, text-and-image work, research-led writing, formal experiments, genre accidents.

If you’re doing something odd, do it well. If you’re doing something well, don’t hesitate making it odd.

A note on our editorial approach

Our acceptance rate for fiction and poetry hovers around 5 percent. There’s no theme. The identity of the issue will emerge from the submissions themselves. Think of it as synaesthetic editing, where you send the writing, we listen for what the issue wants to become. The work sets the weather. 🌦️

Practical details

• We accept previously unpublished work for print (same as our digital editions).
• Submissions close: 21 May 2026 (all print submissions)
• Pitches close: 31 April 2026 (send early if you’re pitching—don’t show up panting at the finish line)

Subject line format: PRINT/COLUMN/TITLE/INITIALS

Example: if Ahaan Pandey is submitting an Armchair Arbiters review of To Kill a Mockingbird:

PRINT/ARMCHAIR/MOCKINGBIRD REVIEW/APandey

Contributor notes:

• Fiction and Pages From A Diary contributors receive a copy of the print edition + an honorarium.

A few friendly warnings (because we want you to win)

• If you send us something “important” that reads like it’s trying to be important, we will (hopefully) not fall for it.
• Avoid over-explaining. Trust our readers. Trust yourself.
• We’d rather read a piece that takes risks and occasionally trips than one that walks perfectly in a straight line.

Now go make trouble. Tell your clever, difficult, underestimated friends to do the same.

Submission deadline: 21 May 2026

Print issue release: September 2026

ALMA Staff

Our mascot writes all ALMA Staff pieces. ORI is whimsical and unpredictable; we’ve tried being friends with him and failed.