Belladonna’s Garden
Website
https://www.belladonnasgardenlit.com/
From the Editor
Belladonna’s Garden is a small, independent literary magazine rooted in the strange and the lyrical. We were born from a desire to make space for work that features cozy stories, poems, and creative nonfiction that ache, unsettle, or quietly bloom. We are especially drawn to writing that embraces magical realism. “As a writer, I have spent the last few years working on short stories and flash fiction, especially those with magic, emotional depth, or historical detail. I’ve submitted to literary magazines both large and small, and I understand the hope and vulnerability that comes with sending work into the world. That experience is part of what inspired me to create Belladonna’s Garden, a space where writers like me could feel seen.” -Shari, founder and editor. We believe in slow publishing, careful curation, and honoring the voice of each writer. Whether it’s a poem that slips under the skin or prose that echoes long after reading, we’re seeking writing that resonates beyond the page and leaves us thinking about it long after reading. As a magazine, we strive to be a welcoming home for emerging and underrepresented writers alongside established voices. The name Belladonna reflects our ethos: beauty with bite, softness with poison, language that heals, but also haunts. We believe the world needs gentle fiction because the world can be too much, too loud, too fast, cruel, and uncertain. So many of us are burnt out on catastrophes and distrust. Grief and fear linger, and joy sometimes disappears. Gentle fiction means stories that make space for softness and beauty, for people being kind to each other, and for healing through words. It can still carry sorrow, darkness, magic, and ghosts, but it invites us to rest. Gentle fiction reminds us that survival is also a kind of defiance. We publish four issues a year—online, with hopes of expanding to print—and we welcome submissions from all over the world. Our first reading period runs from July 15 to August 31, and our inaugural issue will bloom this October.
Submissions
We are looking for work that stirs something deep and writing that is emotionally honest, bold, and alive with tension or tenderness. Send us your cozy horror, romance, magical realism, your hopeful, your strange, and beautiful. We love lyrical prose, image-rich poetry, hybrid forms, and experimental structure when it serves the magazine’s voice. We’re open to a wide range of styles and subjects, but especially drawn to work that explores identity, grief, transformation, historical stories, faith, folklore, dreams, silence, and survival. We want language that makes us pause. We accept: Poetry (up to 3 poems) Fiction and creative nonfiction (under 5,000 words) Multiple Submissions: You may submit three poems at one time or one piece in two categories (for example, one poem and one short story). Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but let us know immediately if your piece is accepted elsewhere. We welcome work from writers of all backgrounds and especially encourage submissions from emerging, marginalized, and historically underrepresented voices. Please send only unpublished work and include a short third-person bio with your submission.
Upcoming
Call for submissions July 15- August 31,, 2025.
Information
Editors Name Shari Wilder
Print publication? No
Circulation
Do you take online submissions? Yes
Submission Guidelines URL https://www.belladonnasgardenlit.com/submissions
Approx. Response Time?
How often do you publish? Quarterly
Year Founded? 2025
Do you pay? No
Twitter
Mailing Address:
Email belladonnasgardenlit@gmail.com
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bdg.lit/