96th of October
Website
From the Editor
The name of this journal, 96th of October, is derived from a character in the Pogo comic strip who wishes to extend the sway of Halloween to where it displaces Christmas. Giving October 96 days effectively annexes December and the first week of January.
Halloween was of course our favorite holiday in childhood, being the most uninhibitedly pagan one in the calendar. Not only creepiness in general, but all the hallucinatory and more-than-normal characters that peopled the imagination were celebrated. For a literary magazine that focuses on the fantastic, the name is most appropriate. With a weary little academic sigh at the minor insult we thus inflict on Russian history, we define ourselves as Octobrists in opposition to Decembrists.
We are a literary SF and Fantasy magazine, with an emphasis on the “literary.” We are well willing to stretch the definitions of our chosen genres to include the marvelous and the extraordinary in all its forms. Wherever reality presents itself with hallucinatory richness, from kitsch to mysticism, we are at home. We are not the proper venue for realism and naturalism.
Literary quality is a non-negotiable point. What we accept must use language in an artistic and thoughtful way. How you say it is just as important as, and often more important than, what you say. When we look at a submission, if we are not struck by some especially vivid or elegant line in the first page, we read no further.
Submissions
Stories should be from 1,000 to 5000 words in length. (We may accept up to 10K if it’s amazing—but realistically, 5K is as much as most folks want to read through a little window.) Individual poems should be of a length that can be read in five minutes or less. We don’t include more than 10 pages of poetry per issue, so that should be the upward limit for a poetry submission.
Information
Editors Name Jacob Rabinowitz
Print publication? No
Circulation
Do you take online submissions? Yes
Submission Guidelines URL http://96thofoctober.com/submissions/
Approx. Response Time? 1 day to 4 weeks
How often do you publish? quarterly
Year Founded? 2019
Do you pay? no
Twitter
Mailing Address:
Email 96thofoctober@gmail.com
Do you pay writers for their work? And can we submit anytime even if it is a Halloween poem? Do you accept rhyming poetry?