Trans/Port: Trans Speculative Fiction for a Queer Future – Call for Submissions

The cover of Trans/Port: Trans Speculative Fiction for a Queer Future, edited by Dan Michael Fielding with Cover Art by April Autumn. A person’s face is inlaid into cut outs of buildings. They are facing up with a look of calm serenity and have a tattoo of a heart in the trans pride colors.

Submit Your Story!

Give us your cyber, your cyborgs, your cyberpunk, cybering, cybersex, cybergender, cyberqueer! Your future-state anti-gender, pro-gender, mixed-gender, beyond-gender, without-gender, playful-gender, WTF-gender. Bodies changing and being changed, bodies that are permeable, bodies that resist, bodies resisted, bodies transcended, bodies that become and are becoming. We want minds that are natural, beyond natural, synthetic, beyond synthetic, digital, and unfathomable. We want gender queer, gender beautiful, gender sacred, gender outside, gender beyond, gender that makes you go, “Wow” or “Huh?” or “Whoa!” or “Cool” or “Me!!” We want all the places where people are people and are machines and are nature and are technology and are no longer people. Give us your all!

We aim to be a primarily hopeful anthology. Stories with angst, drama, and conflict, are more than welcome here. But, if your story is only about pain, suffering, and despair with no end in sight this would not be the right place to submit. We like stories that feel real and tap into real—even negative—emotions, but we also want to see a way out. Dystopia? We’re already living there! Show us utopia and heterotopia (as long as it’s not heteronormative!); show us a future where we’ve got our shit together plus the roadmap to get there!

The title of this anthology is intentionally open to interpretation. Give us trans like transporting, transforming, translating, transmitting, transcendental, transistor (radio? Sure!), and of course transgender! Give us port like any port in a storm, jacking in, porting software, and like we’ve opened a portal to another (better?) world!

What do you like to publish?

You can read our previous anthologies Fireweed: Stories From the Revolution and Resist With Every Inch and Every Breath to get a sense of what we like to publish. If you enjoy tabletop games, we also have a page on Itch.io with both free and paid games.

Here are some other works that have inspired us and which fit the theme of this anthology:

  • Salt Fish Girl by Larissa Lai
  • The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • The Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway
  • The Seep by Chana Porter
  • A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers
  • Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
  • The Female Man by Joanna Russ
  • Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity
  • The Xenogenesis series by Octavia E. Butler
  • The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir
  • Citizen Sleeper (game) by Jump Over the Age

Timeline:

The priority submission window is for those folks historically marginalized or excluded from the publishing world due to race, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, class, or other structural inequity. If you miss the priority window you can still submit to the general window.

The priority submission window opens August 15 – August 31 2025. The general submission window is September 1 – September 15 2025.

Submissions made outside of these dates will not be reviewed.

Multiple submissions are allowed. Send each submission in a separate email.

Our goal is to respond to all submissions by November 30th.

For your submission:

We will accept written prose between 3,000 – 7,000 words in length.

Although themes about sex are okay, this is not an erotica publication.

When the submission window opens, email lonelycryptidmedia@gmail.com. In the subject line of your email: “Trans/Port Submission – Your Last Name – Title of Your Work – Word Count.” Any other format for the subject line will not be reviewed.

The actual submission should be an attachment to the email in Word format. Any version of Word is okay! Title your attachment: “Trans/Port Submission – Your Last Name – Title of Your Work – Word Count.” It is very important to use the same title format for your email subject line and for the submission so your work does not get lost!

Include a short bio in the body of your email. A bit about yourself and your previous publications is great! If you are accepted for publication we will ask for an updated bio at that time.

If accepted for publication, the payment will be $0.01 USD per word. You will need a working account on PayPal or Venmo in order to accept payment.

We are purchasing first publication rights. You agree that this work has not been published anywhere else previously, including online, and that you will not publish it anywhere else for a period of one calendar year from date of anthology publication. We expect the anthology to be published early 2026, but the timeline is subject to change.

By submitting to this anthology you agree that you own the rights to the work and that no AI was used in creating it.

Happy writing!