Capsule Stories is a print literary magazine published once every season. For 2023, we are publishing two editions, a spring/summer edition and an autumn/winter edition.
We are not currently a paying market (someday!), and submissions are always free.
We have a penchant for pretty words, an affinity to the melancholy, and an undeniably time-ful aura. We believe that stories exist in a specific moment, and that that moment is what makes those stories unique.
What we’re really looking for are stories that can touch the heart. Stories that come from the heart. Stories about love, identity, the self, the world, the human condition. Stories that show what living in this world as the human you are is like.
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All writers are welcome to submit, especially writers of color, LGBTQ writers, writers with disabilities, and all writers from marginalized backgrounds.
Contributors who have been previously published in Capsule Stories are welcome to submit. There is no waiting period or restriction on submitting after we've published your work.
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We are currently reading submissions for Capsule Stories Spring/Summer 2023 Edition: Lost in Translation and we are open for blog submissions year-round. You may submit to both the Spring/Summer 2023 Edition and our blog at the same time.
Please read our full submission guidelines for each category before submitting to ensure that your piece is a good fit, as we're looking for submissions that engage with or relate to our themes.
We are currently accepting essays for our blog about your reading life.
Tell us about your reading slumps or the book that you stayed up till 2 a.m. to finish reading. Write about how you read an author’s work before visiting their home city or country and how their work framed your travels. Write about how your understanding of a book changed or deepened after hearing the author talk about it. Write about how you started a virtual book club with your friends, how your reading habits have changed by listening to audiobooks, how you managed to read books during the pandemic without access to your library. We’re interested in essays that explore the intersection of your reading life and your writing life, or your travels.
We’re especially interested in essays that talk about reading the right book at the right time. Tell us about that book that came into your life at the exact right moment in time and how it spoke to you. Maybe it was a book you were supposed to read in college but didn’t until years later. Maybe it was a book a friend insisted you borrow. Maybe it was a book that caught your eye in the bookstore even though you knew nothing about it.
We are not able to pay our blog contributors currently, but we will share your work far and wide. We will also link to your website or social media to encourage more people to follow your work or book reviews. Because these essays are for our blog and are accepted on a rolling basis, we have more time to work with you to develop the essay and make it shine. If you’re a bookstagrammer interested in writing, this is the perfect opportunity to work with an editor to develop a piece of writing and build your writing portfolio. All writers are welcome, especially writers of color, LGBTQ writers, writers with disabilities, and all writers from marginalized backgrounds.
We’re looking for remarkably written essays under 3,000 words on the above topics for our blog. Please do not submit fiction or poetry to our blog category, and please do not send submissions that are not related to your reading or writing life.