Submissions Guidelines
Prose & Poetry Contest 2025
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Our Fairy Tale Prose & Poetry Contest (fee based) closed May 31st at midnight EST.
Our judges have made their decisions!
Winners announced Jun 25, 2025
Amy Trent - Prose, Deborah Sage - Poetry
Bonus issue for the contest launches July 15, 2025
Celebration (Zoom) - July 26, 2025
(all winners are welcome to read up to 7 minutes of their winning entry)
Thank you again to everyone who entered!
Next Submission Window: Trolls!
Call for Prose & Poetry for our Fall/Winter Issue Theme: Trolls
Submissions open August 15-21 (midnight to midnight EST) (no fee)
Tell us what compels trolls to guard bridges. Are bridge trolls keepers of wisdom, curses, or safe passage? Or perhaps you have a troll song to share, the story of a fiddling troll, or maybe a new tune for escaping the Hall of the Mountain King.
Or tell us the tale of the troll who tends the hearth, the garden, brews a soup that keeps the forests in balance. How do trolls live among us today? (Not internet trolls, but beings of stone, moss, and magic trying to survive in the world today.) Give us the story of someone who has troll ancestry; tell us about their sense of self, their magic, their place in the world. Or maybe a trickster and troll become allies. What if the troll has the last laugh? What it’s like to be cast as the villain?
Let the mountains echo and the moss stir. This issue invites your stories and poems from the realm of trolls—whether lumbering through the story style of Asbjørnsen and Moe, whispering from the hills of Shetland, or sleeping beneath a bridge of your own imagining. We're excited to see where you take these creatures.
About Us
The Fairy Tale Magazine is an online lit magazine that publishes two full issues per year and one bonus mini-issue for our Prose & Poetry Contest. We seek fairy tale stories and poems from and about a wide range of backgrounds. Our full issues are released online on April 15th and November 1st. Bonus issue for the contest is released July 15th.
This is NOT a children's publication. We understand young children may see our publication, but it is intended for teens (age 15+) and older.
No submissions will be considered or acknowledged if received outside of the windows stated. Submissions are by Google Form only.
Guidelines 2025
(Updated on May 31, 2025)
The Fairy Tale Magazine accepts only previously unpublished work. We accept unsolicited submissions. For our contest, you may enter as many times as you want ($5.00 fee per entry paid via PayPal). Also, for the contest, you may submit in both categories. Use the following word counts for submissions:
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Short Stories (between 900-2,000 words): Fairy tales inspired by any aspect of the above-listed themes. (1 piece per submission period) (Contest--may submit as many pieces as you like. Each piece $5.00 entry fee)
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Poetry (500 word limit): Poetry inspired by any aspect of the above-listed themes are welcome. (1 piece per submission period) (Contest--may submit as many pieces as you like. Each piece $5.00 entry fee)
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We are not seeking art or nonfiction. We are not hiring. No inquiries please.
How to Format and Submit Your Work
Enter using our fillable Google Form only. Form will be available when submission window is open!
If you encounter issues, please notify us at: thefairytalemagazine@gmail.com.
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Manuscripts should be single spaced with only one space between sentences. Indent new paragraphs
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For poetry, special spacing may be submitted if necessary for your poem
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Include a brief third-person bio (50-word max)
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Please include your PayPal address so we know how to pay you. PayPal ONLY! Thank you!
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Only works in English, please. Strive to use American English word forms and punctuation
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We are happy to read and publish work from any country, and are open to work with a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.
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Simultaneous submissions are welcome. Please email thefairytalemagazine@gmail.com with WITHDRAW in the subject line to let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere. Once we accept a story or poem for publication, be sure to withdraw your submission from other publications
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You must be 18 years old or older to submit work to The Fairy Tale Magazine
About Theme and Content
Keep in mind that all fairy tale related fiction and poetry needs an element of the supernatural—as well as transformation. Mashups welcomed. The essence of classic fairy tales should be maintained in stories and poems submitted here. You can take a lot of license with the work, but there must be a clear connection to the theme.
Absolutely none of the following for any submissions: sci-fi, time-travel, futuristic, space travel, high fantasy, erotica, stage magic, dystopian, extreme horror/gore, western, lengthy grossout descriptions of bodily functions or injuries, objectifying descriptions of people’s bodies, excessive world building (a.k.a., info dumps) war or battle as a major plot device, love triangles, and any form of romance that is not between humans or human-like creatures like fairies.
All content must be PG. Many children find our site even though it’s not a children's publication.
Notification of Winners and Payment
Please read the following completely before entering
Our google form is set to email you a copy of your entry. You will receive an email notifying you of our decision. Chosen authors will be announced on the blog at fairytalemagazine.com around September 25, 2025. The Fall/Winter Issue (PDF) will be on the blog on or around November 1st.
If your work is not chosen, you may submit it elsewhere. No editorial feedback is provided. We do not justify decisions.
There will be a contract to sign.
RIGHTS
First and all electronic and digital rights are being sought, as are rights to use the work for promoting and to benefit The Fairy Tale Magazine (FTM) in perpetuity, although you will retain the right to withdraw consent for using your work in promotional efforts after one year from publication. We are also buying the first podcast, YouTube, and all potential digital media rights to your work. Media rights are not exclusive.
Once a work is published on this website, you are free to shop it elsewhere—meaning electronic and digital and electronic rights revert to you immediately after publishing, but FTM will continue to sell or publish your work as part of the magazine’s mission, on media platforms such as YouTube and on podcasts platforms indefinitely. FTM is not published anywhere but on this site.
Our Contest Judges 2025
To see what we have published before, browse our blog publications to find current samples of the type of work we publish. Or search for Throwback Thursday in our search bar to find more examples. Older works are archived at Enchanted Conversation, which you may search for a deeper connection to the fairy tale stories and poems we publish.