Welcome to our first Market Report: All About Apparition Literary Magazine!
Apparition Lit is a mid-market magazine publishing quarterly issues built around specific themes. Founded in 2017 by Clark Doty, Tacoma Tomilson, Rebecca Bennett, and Amy Robinson, they place an emphasis on finding and publishing great stories. In addition to the founding editors, staff includes Maria Baca Villa, who serves as the current Flash Fiction editor, and Maria Schrater, the Poetry editor. Both associate editors work hard and have become an integral part of the success of the magazine after starting out as first readers.
The staff love to publish writers from traditionally marginalized groups, and work hard to avoid stocking issues with stories reflecting only Global North/Global West storytelling styles. Their equity initiative employs diverse Guest Editors to create an equally diverse catalog that goes beyond the handful of well-known, often published authors.
Themes are decided upon around August, when the editors and associate editors toss around ideas and then vote on each. Next year’s themes are BLIGHT (Jan, 2024); MERCURIAL (Apr, 2024); ANACHRONISM (Jul, 2024); and HARBINGER (Oct, 2024).
In addition, they hold monthly flash fiction contests. The themes for the flash contests come from one of the staff having a lightbulb moment, and the rest helping to flesh it out. For 2024, Marie Baca Villa and Amy Robinson chose food/tradition/culture, sparked by cookbooks they saw in a book store.
Stories must be speculative and fit the theme. Beyond that, they are open to most styles and genres. They’re not really a hard SF market, nor interested in straight lit fiction. They do not want to see misogyny, racism, ableism, fat-phobia, or transphobia not told from an own-voices perspective. Other hard passes: gratuitous and graphic violence or rape, especially child abuse; violence towards animals; erotica or thinly-veiled fan fiction; anything with attached images or graphics; anything sent outside the reading periods.
All fiction comes from their submission pile. Commissioned work is limited to Guest Essays and cover art. Once someone works with them, they become part of the Apparition Lit family. (full disclosure: the owner of this page is a proud member of the App Lit family).
Like many journals, Apparition Lit is 100% reliant on subscribers and Patreons. 100% of their funds goes to the writers they publish. The staff are all 100% volunteers. Could they say 100% more? 😉 Support from the community is vital to their continued success.
Show this magazine and its wonderful staff your support! Subscribe to their Patreon, or purchase issues via the links below:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ApparitionLit
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBW4WZWS/
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1423907
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/apparition-lit-issue-23-creature-july-2023
Thanks for this!