Let’s Talk About Submissions

What We Are Looking For

We are interested in exceptional writing. Writing that takes a formal, emotional, intellectual, or linguistic risk — and earns it.

We are not looking for work that simply sounds “literary.” We are looking for work that is alive.

That may mean a story with a clean plot and devastating restraint. A strange story with its own internal logic. An essay that thinks on the page instead of merely reporting what its author already knows. A poem that leaves the language slightly altered behind it. A translation that carries not only meaning, but rhythm, pressure, humour, silence.

We care less about where you have published, how many followers you have, whether you have an MFA, or how impressive your biography sounds. We care about what happens on the page: voice, precision, control, surprise, emotional or intellectual pressure, and the feeling that this work could have been written by no one else.

If you have written something difficult to forget, send it.

A Note on Our Quarterly Themes

Our quarterly themes are doors. We do not want a piece that obediently illustrates a prompt. We want the theme to unlock something: a form you have not tried, a question you have avoided, an image that will not release you, a story that becomes stranger and more exact the closer you look at it.

Take the theme seriously. Do not take it literally unless literal is where the best work leads you.

What You Can Send

• Short Fiction(2,000–5,000 words) — Stories with authority, urgency, and formal nerve. We are open to realism, fabulism, speculative work, experimental, and everything that resists a useful label — as long as the story knows what it is doing.
• Flash Fiction(500–1,000 words) — Compression is not smallness. Give us a world in a few pages: a change, an image, a pressure point, a world at the edge of a match strike.
• Essays / Creative Nonfiction(2,000–5,000 words) — Personal, cultural, critical, reported, hybrid. We want essays that make the world rethink its systems and mechanics.
• Poetry(one suite of 3 poems) — Send three poems that can stand alone but deepen one another in company. We are drawn to precision, surprise, music, intelligence, and poems that know the difference between obscurity and mystery.
• Translations(2,000–5,000 words) — We welcome exceptional literary work translated into English. Send work with the appropriate permission of the original author or rightsholder. One outstanding translated work may be selected for each issue.

Why Send Your Work to The Moveee Literary?

We are building a small, selective magazine so that every piece we publish can receive real editorial attention. If we say yes, we want the work to leave our hands stronger than it entered them.

• Serious editing— Accepted work receives thoughtful editorial attention before publication.
• Payment— Accepted quarterly contributors are paid $15–$25 per piece, depending on category and length. Exact terms are confirmed in the contributor agreement. For The Moveee Flash we pay a flat fee of $10 for every accepted piece.
• Promotion— Published writers receive dedicated promotion across The Moveee’s channels, including contributor spotlights, pull-quotes, cross-promotion, and selected interviews.
• Prize consideration— Every published piece enters our internal prize consideration process. We will put our strongest eligible work forward for respected external awards and reconsider the year’s best work for The Moveee Editor’s Prize.
• Rights— You retain copyright. The Moveee Literary acquires only the agreed first-publication and archival rights set out in a formal contributor agreement; future commercial reuse requires a separate agreement.
• A real literary home— We want contributors to remain part of the magazine: in our archive, newsletter, conversations, events, and the wider community we are building around ambitious writing.

We are deliberately small. The Moveee Literary is not trying to fill pages for the sake of having an issue. We would rather publish fewer exceptional pieces than meet a quota. Our long-term quarterly model is highly selective. That means we will say no often. It also means that when we say yes, we intend to make the yes matter.

The Moveee Flash

One African story. Every month. No submission fee.

Between our major issues, The Moveee Literary publishes one exceptional flash fiction piece of 500–1,000 words each month through a free call created for African writers and African stories. There is no set quarterly theme: send the flash piece you are already obsessed with.

The Moveee Flash is designed as a low-barrier doorway into the magazine and as a place for emerging writers to earn a serious literary byline. Selected work is published on our website and promoted across our channels. There is no submission fee, and we pay $10 for every accepted piece.

Before You Submit

Do I have to be an African writer to be published in The Moveee Literary?
For our quarterly issues, no. The Moveee Literary is rooted in Africa and the diaspora, but writers from anywhere in the world may submit. The monthly Moveee Flash call is reserved for African writers and African stories.

Do you pay contributors?
Yes. For the quarterly magazine, the proposed contributor payment is $15–$25 per accepted piece, scaled by category and/or length. For The Moveee Flash, we pay a flat fee of $10 per accepted piece.

Do you publish translations?
Yes. The Moveee Literary welcomes literary translation and plans to publish one exceptional translated work per issue. Appropriate permission from the original author or rightsholder is required.

What happens to my copyright?
You keep it. Publication is governed by a contributor agreement covering first-publication and archival rights. Any later anthology, adaptation, translation, or commercial reuse beyond those rights requires a separate agreement.

Will my work be considered for prizes?
Yes. Strong published work will be reviewed for eligible external prize nominations, including awards such as the Pushcart Prize, the Caine Prize for African Writing, Best Small Fictions, and the O. Henry Prize. The strongest work of the year will also be reconsidered for The Moveee Editor’s Prize.

Submission Guidelines

Manuscript format— Submissions are made through our online submission form, where you paste your finished piece directly into the editor there. Please do not leave any identifying information in the piece itself — we read blindly, but if your work is accepted, we will reach out for your updated bio in preparation for amplification across our channels.

Previously published work / reprints— We do not accept previously published work.

Simultaneous submissions— We accept simultaneous submissions, but please let us know as soon as your work is accepted elsewhere.

Response time— We will respond to every submission within 8–12 weeks or earlier. Feel free to query your submission if we are yet to get back to you by the 12th week. For The Moveee Flash, we respond within 4 weeks or earlier.

Translation payment— We pay a modest honorarium for every accepted translation.

Submission fee— For our quarterly issues, we charge a submission fee of $3. Every quarter we have up to 100 free submission slots for writers who are unable to afford our submission fee — email us to request a waiver. We will publicly announce once we have reached our maximum quota for free submission slots. The Moveee Flash has no submission fee. The submission fee helps us run this magazine and pay our contributors — we do hope to stop charging it in the near future.

Send Us Your Work

Do not send us the version you think a literary magazine wants. Send us the version that only you could have written. The one with a pulse. The one that still surprises you when you return to it.

Submissions go through our online form — you’ll paste your piece straight into it, choose a section, and (for quarterly sections) pay the $3 submission fee right there. The Moveee Flash has no fee.

Questions, or need a submission-fee waiver? Email literary@themoveee.com.