Design Observer (Spooky takes on stuff)

Deadline: September 22, 2025

Design Observer is hunting for pitches that explore where horror meets design. Send them thoughts on cursed objects, creepy trends, scary policies, or whatever's haunting the design world right now. Think pieces, criticism, reported articles, or multimedia work. $150 for essays and opinion pieces (800-900 words), $1.50/word for reported pieces with original sourcing (500-900 words). Submission rules—scroll down.

The Kenyon Review

Fiction (including flash), nonfiction, and poetry. Their focus is on Alchemy, Invisible Cities, Precarity, Who Gets to Be American?

Your work must broadly interpret these ideas. They also accept excerpts from larger works and translations. Deadline: Sept 30 2025 Up to 7,500 words for prose. Up to six poems. Up to 30 page excerpts.  $0.08/word for prose (limit $450). Poetry  $0.16/word ($200 limit)  Guidelines here.

Guideposts seeks divine intervention stories
Ongoing series

Guideposts is collecting true stories about God showing up in people's lives for their Angels in Our Lives series. They want first-person accounts about mysterious strangers, divine rescues, angelic visions, animal angels—you get the idea. Has to be your own experience, 750-1,500 words. Submit to: angels@guideposts.org $250 per story

Ad agency needs senior copywriter
Remote, $80-85/hour

Quigley-Simpson wants a seasoned copywriter (7+ years experience) to create concepts and scripts for social video content. This is senior-level work, so they're expecting someone who can handle strategy and execution. $80-85/ hour. This is hashtagged "remote" but you'll need to verify.

NYPL Cullman Centre Fellowship
Deadline: September 26, 2025

This is the big one—a prestigious fellowship for writers (and visual artists) whose projects need the New York Public Library's research collections. You get money, time, and access to incredible resources. $90,000 plus residency. Here's the skinny.

Tractor Beam

They publish soilpunk fiction and graphic fiction. “For our upcoming issues, we’re seeking stories exploring a positive future on Earth with an emphasis on soil and agriculture in the winter, the productive role of ice and snow in the seasons, frost and permafrost, future fashion and style, entertainment and culture, the ocean and soil under water, soil as tech, soil as the origin of life and anti-apocalyptic futures. Literal or abstract, near term or on distant horizons: worlds can take inspiration from innovations or alternative practices in earth and material science, regenerative agriculture, food, microbiology, and more.” They're reading submissions through Oct 6, 2025. This one's not for everybody, but give it a look. Apply here. Max 6,000 words—$1,000.

That's it for this post. Good luck.