submissions
Thank you for your interest in Adi Magazine! To ensure your work is a good fit for us, we encourage you to take a look at our editorial focus and read through our archives prior to submitting. Adi publishes fiction, poetry, nonfiction (essays, interviews, and reportage), and translated work alongside original illustrations.
The best way to learn about upcoming submissions opportunities is to sign up for Adi’s email newsletter.
our current theme:
Adi is thinking about alternative political visions for a world in desperate need of them. We want examples from outside of the mainstream, stories about practices, ideas, and movements that were/are suppressed by economic, socio-cultural, religious, or imperial (colonial) powers. We privilege perspectives from the Global South, always interested in how we might reorient our political universe towards those organic alliances, intertwined liberation theologies, grassroots movements, and revolutionary philosophers. But we are also interested in the experiences of all marginalized peoples everywhere as they have explored alternative economies, subversive strategies, and surprising solidarities. Pieces could be based on historical events, or could focus on imagined futures that subvert current empires.
In the words of James Baldwin, “Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundation.” What realignments, restorations, revisions and resurrections might we uncover and foster with the stars aflame?
Please interpret this call expansively and imaginatively. Familiarize yourself with the range and spirit of our archives; Adi tends toward creative, experimental approaches to political writing, measuring the effects of policy through the intimate lives and experiences of people with a particular focus on those on the margins and in the Global South.
We do not want dreary political agitprop. We love work that bends genres, that embraces the absurd, that excavates interior lives alongside external conflicts. Send us work that analyzes, satirizes, fabulizes, and fantasizes, that disturbs, beguiles, moves, challenges, surprises, and ignites.
Essays & Reportage: OPEN
We welcome essay and reportage pitches from interested writers. Send us a short summary (3 paragraphs maximum) that describes the story you want to tell, how you will tell it, why it’s important, and why you’re the person to write it. Please include 1-2 links of your previous work and send it to admin@adimagazine.com with “NONFICTION PITCH” in the subject line. Adi pays $600 for essays and $750 for reportage.
Interviews: OPEN
We welcome interview pitches for authors with forthcoming/recent books or artists with upcoming/recent shows. Send us a short summary (3 paragraphs maximum) in the body of your email that names the writer or artist you want to interview, why this person should be interviewed at Adi, and why you’re the person to conduct the interview. Please do not send an attachment. Please include 1-2 links of your previous work and send it to admin@adimagazine.com with “INTERVIEW PITCH” in the subject line. Adi pays $250 for interviews.
Translations: OPEN
If you are a translator with work from writers who you think might fit with Adi, please get in touch. We only accept pieces that have not been published in English. If a piece of poetry or fiction has already been translated, you may submit it through our open calls on Submittable, but, if not, feel free to email us with a blurb about the piece at admin@adimagazine.com with “TRANSLATION PITCH” in the subject line. Payment is dependent on the type of piece submitted.
Poetry: CLOSED
Adi accepts submissions of previously unpublished poetry through intermittent open calls on Submittable. Adi pays $150 per poem.
Fiction: CLOSED
Adi accepts submissions of previously unpublished short fiction through intermittent open calls on Submittable. Adi pays $500 for short fiction (up to 5,000 words) and $200 for flash fiction (under 1,000 words).
Important information for submitters:
- We do not publish work that has been previously published in English. (We do occasionally publish work that has been previously published by small presses in other languages.)
- Adi acquires first exclusive, world English-language publication rights but the copyright always remains with the author.
- Please send one submission at a time, and please wait until your submission has been accepted or declined before submitting again.
- We do accept simultaneous submissions; please withdraw individual pieces if they are accepted elsewhere.
- Adi does not accept unsolicited pitches for illustrations.
- Adi does not accept submissions generated with AI.
- Adi does not tolerate hate speech or discriminatory language of any kind.