Submission Theme: Dystopia
a PUNK NOIR Magazine series for May 2025
THIS SUBMISSION DEADLINE HAS NOW CLOSED. You can read the entire Dystopia series, here.
It’s that time again. Time to prove you’ve got real writing chops. You may not have a big deal with one of the top five but hell, you can write like a legend.
Let’s fucking go!
No matter what side of the political spectrum you sit on, it’s obvious to see we’re all living in pretty bleak times. Crashing birthrates, constant surveillance, overcrowded populations, chemicals in the food, propaganda from a gaslighting press, corrupt officials and that’s just for the moment. How about the future?
Can you write a gripping story about a dystopian future in just 200 words?
200 words MAX! A little more meat on the bone this time around. How about it?
BUT, BUT, BUT
People, please keep the fiction dystopian. I don’t want to know your political opinions or leanings at all and those pieces will be rejected. Nothing takes me out of great fiction faster than having to read the author’s real life opinion or hatred. You’ve got 200 words to write a kick arse story. Do that instead.
(All pieces MUST be in a Word Doc w/a 3rd person BIO)
Please give me some kind of a greeting, folks. Don’t just rudely attach your submission to an empty email and expect me to read it like you’re some kind of a literary megastar beyond simple salutations. I hate that.
Subs Open April 1st until April 14th, 2025
SUBMIT HERE
👇
(punknoirmag@yahoo.com)
Series Editor: Stephen J. Golds
Stephen J. Golds was born in North London, U.K, but has lived in Japan for most of his life. He speaks the language pretty well and makes great takoyaki.
He writes primarily in the noir and dirty realism genres and is the editor-in-chief of Punk Noir Press. Some of his writing influences are Charles Bukowski, John Fante, James M. Cain, Tobias Wolff, Sarah Kane and Jim Thompson.
He enjoys spending time with his daughters, reading books, traveling the world, boxing and listening to old Soul LPs. His books are Say Goodbye When I’m Gone, I’ll Pray When I’m Dying, Always the Dead, and Shadows Slow Dancing in Derelict Rooms. His poetry collections are Poems for Ghosts in Empty Tenement Windows I Thought I Saw Once, and Half-Empty Doorways and Other Injuries. He also has a short story and poetry collection titled Love Like Bleeding Out With an Empty Gun in Your Hand.
PUNK NOIR, the online literary and arts magazine that looks at the world at its most askew, casting a bloodshot eye over the written word, film, music, television and more.
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I also saw this too late...
But "no politics"...?! That in itself is more far fetched than any dystopian idea anyone could come up with, I'm afraid.
Sci-fi has always been political, one way or another. Conservative or progressive, conformist or radical, pro or against individualism, you name it. I for one cannot think of a single dystopian story where the author's politics is not an important factor. And I have read a bunch of them, maybe too much...
Everything is political, including silence and denial.
Thought his was about the band DYSTOPIA