**now reading for our spring issue with guest poetry editor jim peterson**

♥ welcome, feral storyteller!

Magpie Zine is a collection of somewhat unusual, possibly urgent, and slightly unhinged human expressions, existing somewhere between feral and fancy or a rock and a highbrow. The mag was born from an affinity for early underground zines—subversive, intelligent, uniquely collaborative, and vigorously imaginative. We are devoted to the spirit of that counterculture and the heart and soul of originality. We support writers and artists whose aesthetic is an experience. View our latest issue here →

we seek the following:

Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, humor, experimental/wildly unclassifiable, and visual art—artwork, photography, collage, comics. The prose word limit is 1500. For poetry, submit 1-3 poems. For visual art, submit 2-4 pieces. We strongly favor work with depth and unique insight. Life is absurd, and we like being moved in unexpected ways by its absurdity. 

For humor, we’re looking for terrible pitches that would never sell and giggle-fit middle school book reports. More on humor subs →

publication basics:

We publish an online issue (flipbook style and downloadable PDF with no paywalls) four times a year. Submissions must be previously unpublished, original, and from the original creator. (Shared on your personal social media or personal blog is fine. We don’t consider this as a publication.) We only accept work created by corporeal humans. We don’t consider AI-written work. For artwork, we ask that it not be previously published online or in a major print publication.

We cannot offer payment at this time, but general submissions are always free. 

Even though submissions are free, please only submit to one category per reading period. Multiple submissions will not be read.

If we have already published your work, please wait three issues before sending us more. If a piece was previously declined, please do not resubmit it unless encouraged to do so. 

Currently, our reading windows are open for two months, and our response time is within three months.

a note on poetry subs:

Poetry submissions tend to close early due to reaching our Submittable plan capacity. If you don't see an option to submit poetry, this means submissions are closed for the current reading period. 

Update: Poetry submissions are now closed for this reading period.