MAYDAY is an international journal of literature, art, and commentary. We regularly publish new fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, translations, cultural commentary, interviews, reviews, and visual art.
MAYDAY is interested in exploring and engaging a wide spectrum of ideas and perspectives. We're interested in culture and history, politics regional and global, the past, present, and future. We're also interested particularly in writers who have been marginalized historically, including writers of color, queer and trans writers, disabled writers, and others who have suffered systemic discrimination.
We do not consider previously published work. Simultaneous submissions are accepted and encouraged. Please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere. All submissions are free during the months of July and December.
Payment for work published at MAYDAY is according to the following flat rates:
- Book Reviews and Interviews: $20
- Creative Nonfiction: $20
- Culture: $20
- Fiction: $20
- MAYDAY:Black: $50
- Poetry: $10
- Translation: $20 (stories), $10 (poems)
- Visual Art: $10
We aim to respond within two months from date of submission. If you have not received a response after two months, please feel free to query us in the Notes area at Submittable.
Rights revert to author upon publication. Please credit MAYDAY with first publication if the work is republished elsewhere.
Please see the specific genre guidelines below for more details. For interview proposals and reviews, please query the editors via the relevant department’s Submittable form below.
Below are the departments currently open for submissions.
The MAYDAY Culture section is looking for enthusiastic, incisive cultural commentary and critical analysis. With an emphasis on diverse or marginalized perspectives, Culture explores politics, race, gender, sexuality, and ability across all forms of art: literature, cinema, television, music, art, theatre, etc. We want arts criticism that's exciting, energetic, and fresh.
Please avoid academic style and tone. No footnotes! There's no minimum length, but we prefer submissions with fewer than 6,000 words. Please send only one Culture submission at a time.
All Culture submissions will be edited before publication. In submitting, you agree that, if your piece should be accepted, the editors will revise your work before it will be published. MAYDAY pays $20 per article. Payment issued upon publication.
We accept pitches, too! Review our editors’ statements below, and feel free to pitch to us via email.
Clement Obropta is interested in pitches for enthusiastic and incisive arts criticism and theory, especially focusing on film, television, video games, and music.
Lisa Ströhm Winberg is interested in pitches that center around visual art, semiotics in design, and fashion as an art form. Lisa is especially interested in pitches about fashion theories and visual analysis of photography.
“More than three-quarters (77%) of newsroom employees – those who work as reporters, editors, photographers and videographers in the newspaper, broadcasting, and internet publishing industries – are non-Hispanic whites.” (Pew Research)
This segregation drives and ensures a standard of media production that fails spectacularly to capture and reflect the experiences, ideas, and interests of Black people in America.
At MAYDAY:Black, the Black writer's voice and story are invited, encouraged, supported, and prioritized.
Passionate to disrupt this long-time, strategic, and exclusionary media practice, Carla Bell, founding director of MAYDAY:Black, set out to honor and elevate stories written by, for, and about Black people – a fresh experience for all readers, and certainly for Black writers, including those seeking first-time publication.
We welcome nonfiction work in opinions and analyses; personal, braided, and reported essays in contemporary and historical contexts.
See representative stories in the January 6th Capitol Attack and Insurrection, inequities in Boston public schools, or The Black Manifesto.
Bring your authentic, curious, courageous, well-rounded stories on life, living, love, loss, representation, race, racism, death, dying, Black plight and civil rights, neighborhood blight, gentrification, white flight, and more. (In no way is this an exhaustive list!)
Send your MD:B story draft (800 to 3,000 words) via Submittable at no cost from anywhere in the world. English only, please.