IFP October Articles

“You want weapons? We’re in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room’s the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!” — The Doctor, “Tooth and Claw” (Doctor Who, Series 2, Episode 2, 2006)

Hello fellow voyagers!I can't believe it's already November. This past month we brought you five new articles on topics from The Beatles to alien clowns to audiobooks! The staff and patrons have been chatting over in our Discord channel, which is our private chat for fans and insiders of IFP. Patrons automatically get access! We are now open to poetry books! Send us your words. We hope to finish up our last remaining novella submissions reading (it's been a rather busy month) and we have some new, super-secret projects in the works. More to come, see you in December!Holly Lyn Walrath Managing Editor

Popular Stories This Month

The audiobook market is one place where sales are booming and writers can really gain leverage. The advent of Audible Originals introduces a unique approach, books which are made into audiobooks before they hit print shelves. We've got the scoop on what it's like to write for Audible Originals with this article by William Ledbetter. Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher is one of our favorite authors. This month E.D. Walker interviewed her about her latest book The Twisted Ones, which is her first horror novel, and of course, doggos. We're honored to feature a piece by Jeremy Brett, Curator of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Collection at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives at Texas A&M University. Jeremy gets to work with some of the coolest ephemera in SFF history. Read all about the pieces he curates, including works by J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Avram Davidson, Robert Heinlein, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, John Sladek, and Robert Silverberg. We have a review this month of Yesterday, which explores a world where The Beatles never existed. But it's also a metaphor for the moments in our lives when we have the chance to make a major choice. Lastly, Cassandra Rose Clarke reviewed It: Chapter Two, a movie that's all about what shapes us as adults. The sequel is mostly as scary as the first and just as awkward-sweet.

Call for Essays

We’re always open to submissions for essays on pop culture, film, TV, books, and games. We’re big fans of io9, Wired, Tor.com, Electric Literature, Book Riot, and Locus Mag. We want essays on popular culture, movies, books, video games, SFF culture, conventions, and anything else geeky. We’d love to see a focus on resistance, feminism, and edgy topics. We’re always interested in hearing from underrepresented and marginalized voices. How you define that is up to you.Read the full guidelines and submit your ideas!

Call for Poetry Books

Interstellar Flight Press will be open for chapbook and full-length speculative poetry books from September 15 – January 1, 2020. We are beyond thrilled that this call will feature a guest editor, Saba Syed Razvi, who will be reading submissions that are passed up to the editors from slush readers.​We are looking for: 

• Chapbooks 15-39 pages in length

• Full-Length poetry books 40+ pages (We are unlikely to take works over 120 pages.) 

• We only publish speculative genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Supernatural, Weird, Surrealism, or any combination of the above. We like Suzette Haden Elgin's definition of speculative poetry as "about a reality that is in some way different than the existing reality." 

• Hybrids or difficult to categorize collections are welcome. This includes prose poetry, visual poetry, erasure/blackouts, found poetry, cross- and multi-genre works. 

• Collaborative manuscripts are welcome, including visual/ekphrastic works. Both collaborators must be able and willing to sign a contract for publication.  (We will make an exception for public domain works, but please cite your sources.)   

Read the full guidelines for more info and send us your poems!