Haven Spec Magazine
Welcome to Haven Spec Magazine
Haven Spec is a speculative fiction magazine featuring stories and poems for a 21st century audience. We love stories with a sense of adventure, stories that teach us, that touch us, that leave us wanting more. We especially like writing that is subtle in its telling and that sticks with us long after we've finished, and we're more likely to buy stories that balance a sense of wonder with a bold plot and emotional depth. For poetry, most important to us is vivid imagery, clever lyricism, and a strong emotional core.
Our goal remains to publish diverse voices from around the world, and to do that, we are actively seeking stories, poems, and non-fiction pieces by authors from backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented in the science fiction and fantasy canon. As writers ourselves, we do our best to handle what you send us with the care and attention it deserves.
Current and Upcoming Calls
Call for Fiction - January 2026 (Limited Demographic)
We like stories that are subtle in their telling and stick with us long after we've finished, and we're more likely to buy stories that balance a sense of wonder with a bold plot and emotional depth. For our two issues focused on the climate crisis, we're particularly interested in publishing stories from people displaced by or threatened by the climate emergency (see our themes below). For our other four issues, we're open to a wide variety of stories across the SFF and weird spectra.
- Pay: 8¢ per word for original fiction
- Word limit: 5000 words
- Language: English
- File type: .doc, .docx, .rtf
- Rights: We buy first serial print and electronic rights for publication of the story in the English language and throughout the world. We also buy non-exclusive archival rights for our website and non-exclusive anthology rights.
We welcome writers from around the world who are writing in the English language, and we're open to translations as long as the piece hasn't appeared in English before. While we've accepted a few reprints in the past, we are currently only looking for original, previously unpublished fiction. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please no multiple submissions. We also ask that you use the Shunn manuscript format and either .rtf, .doc, or .docx file types.
We try to respond to all submissions within ten weeks, so feel free to query by replying to your confirmation email if it has been longer than that. We also fully admit that sometimes it takes much longer, so we apologize in advance. If we hold a piece, please wait until you get our final decision to submit again. And if we publish your piece, we ask that you wait six months from the date of publication before you submit again. Finally, while we do publish both flash fiction and stories close to our word limit, our sweet spot is between 1000 and 4000 words.
Call for Poetry - January 2026 (Limited Demographic)
We like poems that use complex fixed verse forms (think sestina, awdl gywydd, masnavi, etc) as well as free verse. Most important to us is vivid imagery, clever lyricism, and a strong emotional core. For our two issues focused on the climate crisis, we're particularly interested in publishing poems from people displaced by or threatened by the climate emergency (see our themes below). For our other four issues, we're open to a wide variety of poems across the SFF and weird spectra.
- Pay: $20 per poem
- Limit: Five poems, submitted in a single submission
- Language: English
- File type: .doc, .docx, .rtf
- Rights: We buy first serial print and electronic rights for publication of the poem in the English language and throughout the world. We also buy non-exclusive archival rights for our website and non-exclusive anthology rights.
We welcome writers from around the world who are writing in the English language, and we're open to translations as long as the piece hasn't appeared in English before. While we've accepted a few reprints in the past, we are currently only looking for original, previously unpublished poetry. Both simultaneous and multiple submissions are fine, but please no more than five poems at a time, all included in a single file. We also ask that you use the Shunn manuscript format and either .rtf, .doc, or .docx file types.
We try to respond to all submissions within ten weeks, so feel free to query by replying to your confirmation email if it has been longer than that. We also fully admit that sometimes it takes much longer, so we apologize in advance. If we hold a piece, please wait until you get our final decision to submit again. And if we publish your piece, we ask that you wait six months from the date of publication before you submit again. Finally, while we do publish very short poems, our sweet spot is something longer than just three or four lines.