Submissions are Open

Seaside Gothic is open to submissions of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and visual collections from 14th April to 20th April 2025!

If you wish to submit a short story, a poem, a piece of creative nonfiction, or a set of images, then of course we would love to see it, but please make sure you consider the style and aesthetic we like here at Seaside Gothic by taking a look at a few of our previously published pieces. It is also worth ensuring your submission meets the terms laid out on on our Submissions page. We are only looking for human-created content. If you are interested in our acceptance rates, previous Seaside Gothic submission statistics can be seen by paid subscribers.

All written submissions must be stand-alone pieces and no longer than 1,000 words. Visual submissions should be a collection of between five and ten images that work together to tell a story or present a theme. Each submission needs to meet the three criteria that define seaside gothic literature:

1. It is led by emotion, not reason, exploring the human experience mentally and spiritually as well as physically, and is unashamed to embrace the violence of the sea and the wind along with the beauty of the land and the sky and the ever-changing tide.
2. It addresses duality—land and sea, love and hate, the beautiful and the grotesque—to reflect the structures that line the coast, which are both those solidly braced against the fiercest elements and those built from what surrounds in a state of shanty transience.
3. It connects to the edge, living on the seaside either literally or figuratively, and has one foot in the water and the other on solid ground, presenting the juxtaposition of a physical border with open space and a wilderness of water that provides life yet is inconsumable.

To get a feel for what we like to publish in Seaside Gothic, please read a few examples from previous Issues.

Accepted work is published in print (ISSN 2752-7867) and digitally (ISSN 2755-001X), with print copies available to buy from seasidegothic.com and a selection of retailers, and digital content published online as a mix of free-to-access and subscriber exclusive posts for those with a Patreon subscription. Seaside Gothic kindly requests first UK publication rights and a three month exclusivity period starting from the date of publication of the print Issue. Seaside Gothic is non-profit and pays for accepted content with rates based upon income. There are no submission fees.

Submissions will stay open until midnight Greenwich Mean Time at the end of 20th April 2025. For full submission terms please see the Submissions page.