Submissions

Sage Cigarettes Magazine is a hybrid literary & arts magazine that produces quarterly literary issues & publishes a series of columns, stand-alone articles, & pop culture reviews.

We exist to support & platform independent artists & creatives in various genres —writers, podcasters, readers, artists, & musicians.

We are a volunteer-run independent press. If you’d like to contribute & support our efforts, please check out our support page.

Submissions are always free. Simultaneous submissions are encouraged but please have the courtesy to let us know immediately if you get picked up elsewhere.

General submission guidelines

• Authors published with Sage Cigarettes retain all rights to their work.
• Every submission must include a short contributor bio & preferred method of contact.
• Simultaneous submissions are encouraged but please let us know ASAP if your work was accepted elsewhere.
• Previously published pieces will be considered but please be sure that that you are in the clear with any agreement made with your previous publisher & let us know who previously published the work & when.
• Please include a list of trigger warnings in the body of your email if applicable.
• Any work submitted which is found to be racist, bigoted, hateful and/or work which promotes gratuitous or sexual violence will not be published and may result in the writer being banned from submitting and from our socials.
• We will remove or reject work by any submitter or contributor we find to have plagiarized or been racist, misogynistic, homophobic, ableist or hateful in the literary community.

Current open calls

Columns — we are currently looking for regular columnists who wish to write regular pop culture review, craft, or interview columns.

Book reviews — Our book review editor, Nicole Yurcaba, is currently open to review requests & submitted reviews.

Blog content — We are looking for pop culture writing, craft essays, interviews, & reviews for our weekly blog schedule.

Playlist — We are currently looking for contributor selected tracks for our seasonal playlist.

Poetry, prose, & art in the theme of The Sun (XIX)

Sage Cigarettes Magazine will release its first compiled issue since Oct. 2021 on June 20, 2024. The issue theme will be The Sun (XIX).

The theme is tarot-based but open to wide interpretation. The sun is the card of Leo, of summer, of deep abiding happiness, of fields of summer flowers, & the smell of sun-kissed wood. In reverse, the sun card is an indication of incomplete happiness, of good fortune just out of reach, of realizing that joy is a feeling & nothing is final. Tell us about the best days of your life, the days that fell short, the days that were golden despite it all. Explore the feeling of the sun at your back, the hum of tires against pavement during a summer road trip, the smell of warm honeysuckle.

We will consider a wide variety of takes on the theme.

We will open for submissions for this new issue on April 1, 2024 & close May 15, 2024. We will accept poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, & art in the theme of The Sun (XIX).

Submission guidelines

• All submissions must be sent to submissions@sagecigarettes.com. No submissions sent to individual editors will be considered for this themed call.
• Authors & artists may send up to:
  • 3 poems
  • 3 art pieces with titles & process descriptions if desired
  • 2 flash pieces — fiction or cnf — up to 1,000 words each
  • 1 short story between 1,000-4,000 words
• We will send all responses by no later than June 9, 2024. We will respond to everyone & post updates via our social media.
• Any additional questions can be directed to Managing Editor LE Francis, lefrancis@sagecigarettes.com.