Submission Guidelines

We are currently CLOSED to submissions.  We have no plans to re-open. This page is left here for archival purposes only. DO NOT SUBMIT MANUSCRIPTS TO US. They will be deleted unread.

What We Want

Sybil’s Garage publishes a wide variety of speculative fiction, including traditional science fiction, fantasy and horror as well as more atmospheric/slipstream stories. For issue no. 7 we seek to cast a wider net and encourage contributors to send us both atmospheric/slipstream stories as well as those with traditionally strong plots and characters.

We also will look at stories with little or no speculative element, but with speculative tendencies (e.g. weird but not-necessarily supernatural.)

In addition, we are very interested in seeing stories written by and/or including varied ethnicities, social classes, and nationalities. We’d like to see more stories featuring under-utilized cultures and settings as well. Our editors and readers represent a variety of backgrounds and we’re always working to ensure that our publication reflects that as well.

Please send us your best work.

Fiction Guidelines

Your stories should be no greater than 5000 words. While we may publish longer works, the greater your story is above this limit, the less likely we are to publish it. We prefer original work to reprints.

Do not submit more than one item to us for consideration at a time. We are strict about this.

Please do not submit your story to another publication while we are considering it. We attempt to keep response times under six weeks.

We have an online submission form for fiction. Email for fiction will be deleted unread.

In other words, for fiction:

Poetry Guidelines

We have no specified length or theme for poetry, however we prefer poems of less than 50 lines. Some of our favorite poets include Edna St. Vincent Millay, Octavio Paz, William Blake, John Milton, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, Rumi, Poe, Whitman, etc. Perhaps it goes without being said, but we enjoy poems with strong emotional themes.

You may send your poem to other markets while we are considering it, but if it sells, please let us know as soon as possible.  Please send only one poem at a time to us.

In other words, for Poetry:

Formatting Guidelines

Fiction and poetry must be formatted in Standard Manuscript Formatting. If your document is not formatted properly, we reserve the right not to read it. We prefer Courier or Times Roman fonts. Only Microsoft Word Documents (version 97-2003) or RTF (Rich-Text Files) are acceptable.

Click here for instructions on how to save as an RTF file.

Please DO NOT send Word 2007 (“docx”) files to us.

Art & Non-Fiction

We are always looking for unique artwork, mind-opening essays, interviews with interesting people, and other forms of non-fiction.  If you think you have something that might interest us, please query us at info [at] senses five [dot] com.

Translated Works

We are interested in seeing fiction translated into English from other languages.  We prefer if the work was previously published in its original language.  Please note that the work has been translated in the cover letter and on the manuscript.

Response Times

We attempt to keep our response times under six weeks. Feel free to query us at info [at] senses five [dot] com if you haven’t heard from us after six weeks. We also frequently post updates about the status of the reading queue on our blog. Please check there first before querying.

Payment Schedule

The payment breakdown is as follows:

Payment for artwork and non-fiction is negotiable. Payments are made prior to publication.

How To Submit

We are currently closed to submissions.

We DO NOT accept email submissions.