Hello fellow strange pilgrims,

It’s that time of the month again when we send out our theme for our free micro writing challenge!

Remember, the rules are simple: the piece must be 300 words or under, it must respond to the month’s theme (however loosely, however strangely), and it must be submitted within by October 3rd midnight ET1. We’ll reply to everyone within 2-3 weeks (before we announce and publish the winner, of course). Winner gets $30 USD + publication + eternal bragging rights.

October’s theme: Grotesque

* Submit Here *

We’ll announce each month’s theme when the window opens — or just before — so you’re not planning weeks in advance. We don’t want you to overthink this! Just let the writing flow.

✷ April Winner | Theme: THE FOOL

✷ May Winner | Theme: RABBITS

✷ June Winner | Theme: LOVE & SEX

✷ July Winner | Theme: CULTISH

✷ August Winner | Theme: UTOPIA

✷ September Winner | Theme: MARRIAGE

Yours,

Shannan & Karan

Hello fellow strange pilgrims,

Tonight is the eve of Leonard Cohen’s birthday. In case you’ve somehow missed it, we—the editors behind this magazine—are lovers of Leonard Cohen, devotees, fans, worshippers, call-it-whatever-you-will-ers. Today we’ve opened for a very blink-and-you’ll-miss-it free general submission period in honor of LC.1 Some quick recap below on submission guidelines, friends, but if you already feel ready, then, gently kiss the button below (metaphorically speaking. You do need to click it, literally speaking).

take me to the submission portal

Oh and if you’re a poet, then this is for you → Our sister mag, ONLY POEMS, is currently open for the official $3500 Leonard Cohen Poetry Prize until November 7, 2026. You may send up to 3 pages of poetry on the intersections of love, faith & sex.

You can also expect an update on our reading adventures for the inaugural $3000 Strange Pilgrims Prize for Story of the Year & Essay of the Year soon. And I’m at work on a few more exciting editorial pieces. Upcoming: Leonard Cohen Was Right: 11 Prophecies, Prayers & Reflections from the Poet Laureate of the World!

Submission Guidelines

Submit:

Short Stories (up to 10,000 words)

Essays / Narrative Nonfiction (up to 10,000 words)

Flash Fiction (under 1500 words)

Flash CNF (under 1500 words)

This is an un-themed call. Your writing can be about anything. Though as a refresher:

• Deadline: Sep 22 midnight

• Eligibility: Open to anyone writing in English, anywhere in the world

• Restriction: No previously published work (but self-published on your blog/Substack/etc. is fine!)

• Evaluation: All submissions are read by us, Shannan Mann & Karan Kapoor, the editors of Strange Pilgrims (& ONLY POEMS)

• Response time: Within 4 months

• Optional: $10 Fast Response (response within 4 weeks)

• Payment: If selected for publication, we pay $200 for long-form writing, and $50 for flash (via PayPal or Wise).

Submit now!

And always remember:

& we’ll add to that: be a strange pilgrim!

With gratitude,

Shannan & Karan

Subscribe now

Hello fellow strange pilgrims,

It’s that time of the month again when we send out our theme for our free micro writing challenge!

Remember, the rules are simple: the piece must be 300 words or under, it must respond to the month’s theme (however loosely, however strangely), and it must be submitted within the 3-day window1. We’ll reply to everyone within 2-3 weeks (before we announce and publish the winner, of course).

August’s theme: Utopia

✴︎ Submit here ✴︎

We’ll announce each month’s theme when the window opens — or just before — so you’re not planning weeks in advance. We don’t want you to overthink this! Just let the writing flow.

✷ April Winner | Theme: THE FOOL

✷ May Winner | Theme: RABBITS

✷ June Winner | Theme: LOVE & SEX

✷ July Winner | Theme: CULTISH

Yours,

Shannan & Karan

There’s a bliss to it, of course, and we feel a lot happier (and safer) than when we were in the US, but it also means that some things were just very hard to squeeze into our schedules of working full time, parenting fuller time, and… * gestures at the thing called life *

But not to despair. We are now OFFICIALLY OPEN for our free Summer window. One thing we’ve changed is that you can now send us stories and essays up to 10,000 words as opposed to the previous limit of 5000. All the other details are below in case you need a refresher, or you can just hop on over here to submit (and you might notice our submission portal got a little makeover, so any and all praises for that are heartily welcome ha).

take me to the submission portal!

◉ Send us

Short Stories (1001-10,000 words)

Essays / Narrative Nonfiction (1001-10,000 words)

Flash Fiction (100-1000 words)

Flash CNF (100-1000 words)

Each piece will be published alongside a short interview with the author.

◉ Payment

$200 for long-form

$50 for flash

• Deadline: July 20, 2026

• Eligibility: Open to anyone writing in English, anywhere in the world

• Restriction: No previously published work (but self-published on your blog/Substack/etc. is fine!)

• Evaluation: All submissions are read by us, Shannan Mann & Karan Kapoor, the editors of Strange Pilgrims (& ONLY POEMS)

• Response time: Within 4 months

• Optional: $10 Fast Response (response within 4 weeks)

Full guidelines + submission portal →

General submissions are — and always will be — free.

To run a magazine that doesn’t charge fees and pays writers, we rely on our readers. If you’d like to help sustain Strange Pilgrims, you can:

1. Become a paid subscriber

2. Leave a tip when submitting

3. Request paid editorial feedback (via the submission form)

Subscribe now

May the alphabet sing to you,

Shannan & Karan

Hello fellow strange pilgrims,

We’re back again for another Micro of the Month writing challenge with a new theme. In case you need a refresher on what this is, here ya are:

☆ Details for the July challenge ☆

Opens: NOW!

Closes: July 3rd midnight EST (we’ll keep it open another 12 hours for anyone in a different time zone as I know this can get confusing, but please do try to get stuff in by this official deadline).

Rules: Send us prose (not poetry, please) 300 words or less in response to the month’s theme revealed below (however loosely, however strangely).

Money: As with our other general submission calls, the Micro of the Month is fully free to submit to though you can choose to pop something into our tip jar or request paid editorial feedback if you like. We do not give more weight to subs by folks who do go for these paid options, but being an indie, ad-free lit mag all such support helps us keep going. The winner receives $30.

Timing: Everyone will hear back from us by July 25th at the latest. The winner will be published on the last Sunday of the month, so this time around that’s July 26th.

Theme: Cultish

Submit Now →

Can’t wait to read your micros!

Yours,

Shannan & Karan

PS: For some inspiration, check out the previous winners here:

Hello fellow strange pilgrims,

We’re back again for another Micro of the Month writing challenge with a new theme. First, though, a quick recap on what this is all about:

☆ Details for the May challenge ☆

Opens: May 1st (officially, but for our subscribers—you folks!—subs are open right now!!)

Closes: May 3rd midnight EST (we’ll keep it open another 12 hours for anyone in a different time zone as I know this can get confusing, but please do try to get stuff in by this official deadline).

Rules: Send us prose (not poetry, please) 300 words or less in response to the month’s theme revealed below (however loosely, however strangely).

Money: As with our other general submission calls, the Micro of the Month is fully free to submit to though you can choose to pop something into our tip jar or request paid editorial feedback if you like. We do not give more weight to subs by folks who do go for these paid options, but being an indie, ad-free lit mag all such support helps us keep going. The winner receives $30.

Timing: Everyone will hear back from us by May 30th at the latest. The winner will be published on the last Sunday of the month, which in May is also the last day of the month, May 31st.

Theme: Rabbits

Submit Now →

Can’t wait to read your micros! Yours,

Shannan & Karan

Subscribe now

Hello fellow strange pilgrims,

While reading for our Gabo period is underway, we’ve been cooking up another fun new way to get all our creative spirits surcharged.

Starting this April, for the first three days of every month, we’ll open for a free, themed writing challenge. One winner — who we feel has written the Micro of the Month — will be selected and published on the last Sunday of the month alongside an editor’s note and a contributor’s note. The winner will receive $30.

We want to explore what makes a piece of writing stand out when the room is small. What happens when you strip a story or a fragment or a moment down to 300 words or fewer? What survives? What can’t help but be there?

The rules are simple: the piece must be 300 words or under, it must respond to the month’s theme (however loosely, however strangely), and it must be submitted within the 3-day window. We’ll reply to everyone within 2-3 weeks (before we announce and publish the winner, of course).

April’s theme: The Fool!

We’ll announce each month’s theme when the window opens — or just before — so you’re not planning weeks in advance. We don’t want you to overthink this! Just let the writing flow.

We’re going to open a day early today, just for you! Submit your micro here.

Can’t wait to see what you make.

Yours,

Shannan & Karan

Happy New Years, everyone!

This is the week we’ll share our first ever selected flash story, and then every Thursday after that, we’ll publish a new piece of prose alongside an interview with the writer.

Reading Updates & Insights

We’re now halfway through reading and responding to the over 7000 submissions we received for our first reading period. I’m happy to share we’ve been able to stick to our response time frames for both fast and regular subs. So, because we closed for subs on Nov 30, I can confidently say we’ll have finished replying to everyone by the end of March, give or take a couple days.

I plan on making a more in-depth post after that sharing some cool data points and insights and a kind of overarching analysis of the state of submitting and writing short fiction and prose today as it connects to what we’ve learned from reading this first batch of subs for Strange Pilgrims. Just so I can feel the pulse for this:

Year-Round Free Subs

Submissions are ALWAYS open for paid subscribers via this link

The current password can be found here below the paywall:

2026 Submission Dates

On the topic of submissions, then, I also want to share what our next reading periods will be. We’ve been mulling this one over a bunch and here’s what we’ve come up with for 2026:

We’ll open next on March 6, 2026 for 24 hours only in honor of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s birthday.

Next, we’ll open for a longer period 2 weeks between July 1—July 15, 2026. And our last open regular reading period for 2026 will be on September 21st (in honor of Leonard Cohen), once again this one for 24 hours.

We have yet to decide whether we’ll keep submissions for Review & Critique open for longer chunks of time or not. I imagine we’ll have a better idea once we’ve finished reading through all the subs we’ve received in this category.

Submissions are and will remain free for all these reading periods here alongside additional options to support us via tip-jar and the fast-response options, or to purchase feedback for your submitted piece.

We’ve also not yet decided whether we’ll open for paid editorial feedback separately from these submission periods. We invest considerable time and effort into the feedbacks we give and have so far received wonderful responses. So, it really just is a matter of figuring out how much of our time we can make available alongside everything else. Again, we’ll update you soon as we’ve got this one figured out.

Some Post-Virality Thoughts

In our first email/post to all subscribers, after a few of our notes went viral here on Substack, we shared the following in an effort to maintain transparency while also keep sustainability in mind:

To run a magazine that doesn’t charge fees and pays writers, we rely on our readers. If you’d like to help sustain Strange Pilgrims, you can:

1. Become a paid subscriber

2. Leave a tip when submitting

3. Request paid editorial feedback (via the submission form)

To the 59 of you who’ve leapt into paid subscriptions — thank you so much! We don’t take that lightly. It means this strange little idea is already standing on its legs. Here are just some of the signposts we see ahead of us:

• At 250 paid subscribers, we can cover operating costs — paying writers, commissioning art, design, and keeping the lights on (in our heads and on the site).

• At 500, we can release beautiful quarterly digital issues.

• At 1000, we can dream of going to print.

I’m happy to share that we are about to reach the first signpost! Your support means the world to us. Thank you very much for making Strange Pilgrims possible. We’re excited to serve you and bring you the best in creative writing today!

There are also so many cool things we want to attempt but I find I have to keep holding myself back, because, well, time and money money and time and on and on it goes. Still, immensely grateful to be where we are right now!

What to Expect

As I noted above, every Thursday you’ll receive a new piece of writing we’ve accepted from our submission pool. Every other week, on a day other than Thursday (probably Monday or Tuesday), we’ll also send out one additional awesome post.

For example, we very much intend to continue our Lit Theory 101 series:

And a follow-up to our most loved post yet:

As well as loads more cool things we’ve got planned.

Soon, I’ll make separate sections for everything (like, short stories, flash, editorials, etc) and you’ll be able to pick and choose (if you want to) which specific newsletters you want to receive.

Besides written posts, we’re also thinking of doing an AMA style Substack Live with and myself. If you have a question you’d like us to answer, please send it through here.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Friends,

That’s a wrap on our first ever submission call. Below, we’ve got some stats for you. We value transparency and wish the publishing world was clearer about what the fuck’s actually going on. So, here’s us trying to do our part!

We opened on September 21st and closed December 1st. We’ll start publishing on January 8th. We hope you’re ready to read some fantastic prose!

Access Free Year-Round Submissions

Given the deluge above, we’re not yet sure exactly when we’ll re-open for general submissions, though we hope to have a better idea after the winter holidays.

If you’d like to submit while our general portal is closed, we have a special submission portal for paid-subscribers only.

Paid subscriptions allow us to stay independent & ad-free, all while keeping everything we publish accessible for everyone everywhere. As long as your paid subscription is active when you submit, your submission will be accepted through this portal.

The portal requires a passcode, which we’ll update periodically and let you know about each time. Here are the current details:

Read more

Within two weeks of announcing Strange Pilgrims here on Substack, 12,869 of you are here. That’s the size of a very successful indie concert. We didn’t expect this, but we’re grateful beyond measure.

So, before anything: thank you for being here, at the very beginning. We hope to be around for a long time to come, and have you by our side in the years (decades) ahead.

As you may have gathered from wandering around our (for now sparse) Substack, we’re attempting something rare: a self-sustaining, reader-supported, ad-free, independent magazine that doesn’t charge submission fees, and also pays its writers.

Send us your words →

◉ Publication

Beginning January 8, we’ll publish every Thursday, alternating between flash and long-form writing:

Short Stories (up to 5000 words)

Essays / Narrative Nonfiction (up to 5000 words)

Flash Fiction (under 1000 words)

Flash CNF (under 1000 words)

Each piece will be published alongside a short interview with the author.

◉ Payment

$200 for long-form

$50 for flash

Paid promptly post-publication via Paypal.

• Deadline: November 30

• Eligibility: Open to anyone writing in English, anywhere in the world

• Restriction: No previously published work (but self-published on your blog/Substack/etc. is fine!)

• Evaluation: All submissions are read by us, Shannan Mann & Karan Kapoor, the editors of Strange Pilgrims (& ONLY POEMS)

• Response time: Within 4 months

• Optional: $10 Fast Response (response within 4 weeks)

Full guidelines + submission portal →

General submissions are — and always will be — free.

To run a magazine that doesn’t charge fees and pays writers, we rely on our readers. If you’d like to help sustain Strange Pilgrims, you can:

1. Become a paid subscriber

2. Leave a tip when submitting

3. Request paid editorial feedback (via the submission form)

Subscribe now

To the 59 of you who’ve leapt into paid subscriptions — thank you so much! We don’t take that lightly. It means this strange little idea is already standing on its legs. Here are just some of the signposts we see ahead of us:

• At 250 paid subscribers, we can cover operating costs — paying writers, commissioning art, design, and keeping the lights on (in our heads and on the site).

• At 500, we can release beautiful quarterly digital issues.

• At 1000, we can dream of going to print.

Okay, that’s enough, we think. Get to work and send in your stories & essays & whatever else soon!

With love & gratitude,

PS: Today is Leonard Cohen’s birthday, beneath whose shadow we live & breathe. Here’s a song for you ❤️