Hey YWS,
I've been talking to Nate and he said this would be the best place to post about this. I'm Shaun from Young Writers Online and we run our own little magazine for young writers called Survival By Storytelling (we only publish writers 25 and under). We didn't really reach out to YWS for the first issue and I want to make sure that we do the opposite this time around. Our magazine is not YWO specific, even though it is run there; the first issue contained fiction from folks from all over the place, some of them members, and some of them not. We'd love to see submissions from YWS folks for our second issue.
The theme for the second issue of Survival By Storytelling is Steampunk. We're looking for fiction, poetry, articles, and artwork (emphasis on the first two). There's no official deadline for the second issue, but we're expecting to fill it by mid-August, which should give everyone plenty of time to work something up and submit. You can find full submission guidelines here.
This site gives a pretty good impression of what Steampunk is, or you can look at the thread I posted about it here. It should also be noted that we're not only interested in traditional Steampunk. We're interesting straight genre Steampunk, literary Steampunk, and all manner of experimental, unusual, and non-traditional Steampunk works (the guidelines also indicate this, if you have a chance to read them). The genre elements can even be extremely lite; it doesn't matter to us. We want good stories and poems that fall within the rubric of Steampunk in some way. Fiddle with the conventions!
We are also a paying magazine. Our pay rates have officially gone up. We pay a token payment of $5 for every accepted submission as a kind of "advance," which, when "earned out" rolls over into a royalty system (3/4 of all profits go to the contributors, while 1/4 goes to YWO; the magazine is non-profit). Hopefully we can raise the payment in the future.
Other than that, I'm not sure what else to say. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to send me a PM or post a message here. I'll do my best to answer any questions you all might have.
Hopefully I'll see some of you submit in the near future! I'm looking forward to it.
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