Archive for Announcements

Outstanding news!

Ignyte Awards 2026 logo

We are honored to once again be Ignyte Award finalists for Outstanding Fiction Podcast!

What makes the Ignytes stand out is their stated mission: “to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.”
In 2025, we were proud to publish science fiction by and about people from around the world, sharing a broad range of experiences that may be challenging, but are always ultimately hopeful. We strive to keep your escape pod fully stocked with stories, while ensuring that those stories remind us that the future belongs to everyone.
This nomination honors not only our writers, without whom we would have no stories to tell, but also our amazing narrators, our crew, and the universe of Escape Artists staff who work tirelessly to bring those stories to life in audio form.
Thank you to our listeners, our readers, and to the Ignyte jurors!

A New XO Has the Deck

Much as we would like to freeze our crew in cryo to preserve things as they are indefinitely, we have been advised that this would negatively impact ship operations. As a consequence, sometimes we have to bid one of our officers a fond farewell as they depart for new adventures.

Assistant editor Kevin Wabaunsee is disembarking after many years of hard work, and we are so grateful to have had him here. We’ll miss his calm presence and keen story insights, as well as his deft management of our vitally important lower decks crew.

Stepping into his position is Christine Amsden, one of the aforementioned crew who has helped ensure that our steady influx of stories doesn’t back up and cause a reactor meltdown. We are excited to have her join us at the helm.

Kevin had these parting words to share:

“I’ve been a part of the Escape Pod family for the better part of a decade, and I can’t imagine where I would be without it. I honed my editorial sensibilities reading Escape Pod slush, and being an editor here taught me so much about the craft of writing—and being a writer. My first science fiction sale was to Escape Pod, way back in 2017, and then I spent years reading submissions as an associate editor, and a few more as assistant editor. While I was on the masthead, we even nabbed a few Hugo nominations!

“As with so many partings, saying farewell to Escape Pod is bittersweet. I believe that Escape Pod is a publication the world truly needs: science fiction focused on positive, uplifting, optimistic visions of the future. I’m proud to have been a part of it. Nonetheless, time is an unforgiving adversary, and there’s simply too little of it to allow me to devote the effort and attention demanded by such a magical publication.

“So, it’s with both a heavy heart and a sense of profound optimism that I pass my assistant editor mantle on to Christine Amsden. I helped bring Christine on as an associate editor, and since then, I have consistently been impressed with her astute feedback and keen insights into submissions. I can’t wait to see what Phoebe and Christine have in store for Escape Pod: I’m sure it will be amazing.”

And Christine would like to add:

“I am thrilled and honored to be taking on the role of Assistant Editor at Escape Pod. First, a special thank you has to go out to Kevin Wabaunsee, who trained me as a slush reader three years ago and who has now placed a great deal of faith in me to carry on in his stead. I’ll miss you, and I’ll try to make you proud!

“For most of my career, I’ve been a novelist (you can find my work on Amazon). Short stories played only a small role in my world, but  only because I struggled to read them with extremely low vision. For those of you who remember the early 2000s, most magazines were in print, and online publications didn’t have a lot of clout. I did, a very long time ago, place a few short stories in now-defunct publications. With the help of magnification and a lot of effort, I managed to read my own story—but honestly, reading everyone else’s was too big a chore.

“It’s easier to be a legally blind author in 2026. In fact, Escape Pod was the very first audio market I stumbled upon (thanks to Benjamin C. Kinney, another former assistant editor). How delightful to discover short stories in my podcast feed every Friday! Better yet, these stories tended to be hopeful, even optimistic about the future.

“I started taking the craft of short story writing as seriously as the craft of novel writing, it was only natural that I jumped at the chance to slush read for Escape Pod. It’s only natural, now, that I jumped at the chance to become an assistant editor. I can’t wait to be part of honoring the vision of Escape Pod—and to help you find your next favorite science fiction story!”

And with that, back to work! These stars won’t explore themselves.

Good News Everyone! We’re Hugo Finalists!

Escape Pod and Hugo logos on a planet and nebula background, text: 2026 Hugo Awards Best Semiprozine Finalist
We are honored to once again be Hugo finalists!
2025 was a stellar year for Escape Pod, celebrating both our 20th anniversary and our thousandth episode. It’s been an amazing journey, and it is the support of our listeners that brought us all this way.
In addition to them, we wouldn’t be where we are without the writers who crafted these stories in the first place, and without the narrators whose performances brought them to life. Our crew of readers and producers and hosts and everyone on the admin side also keep our starship sailing on, for which we are eternally, immensely grateful. These include:


Kevin Wabaunsee and Phoebe Barton, our assistant editors

Tina Connolly and Alasdair Stuart, our intrepid hosts
Adam Pracht and Summer Brooks, our audio producers

Marcus Tsong, Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko, Ewen Ma, Christine Amsden, Rick Danforth, Michael A. Pepin, EA Crawley, Abhijeet Sathe, Sarah Loch, Phoenix Alexander and Casey Lawrence, our associate editors

After twenty years, we still struggle with what “fun” and “hopeful” and “escapist” science fiction means from an editorial perspective. The terms are subjective, and a single work may not encompass all of them. Fun can be tempered by fatigue, hope by hardship, escape by painful experience. Even so, in recent years we believe it’s been more important than ever to give people a reason to feel good for at least an hour a week, and we’re still proud that our audience knows what they will get when they download Escape Pod.Thanks to everyone in our audience for joining us on this journey. We’re proud to help keep your escape pod fully stocked with stories.

Special submissions call: Democratic Futures

The Escape Pod logo on a space background with rows of stylized human figures behind it, on top text reads "Democratic Futures"
Democracy isn’t a new concept, but its parts and parameters have shifted across the centuries. Cultural changes and technological advancements have impacted how it is perceived and how it functions. Suffrage has, in many places, expanded, but is still not universal. Different systems and ballot designs have influenced election outcomes in unpredictable ways. Electronic voting machines abound, but in some places, marbles are dropped into containers as stones were thousands of years ago. Political manipulation can be subtle or overt, from propaganda to gerrymandering to outright violence.

What will the future bring? That’s what we’re here to find out.

Escape Pod is opening for a special Democratic Futures submission window from now until June 30th. We’re looking for science fiction stories about the future of democracy, whatever that might look like to you. Send us eccentric alien elections, post-human propaganda machines, dystopian door-knocking campaigns, opposition research spy operations—anything that examines and interrogates the myriad interconnected aspects of democratic systems, and their constellations of possibilities and permutations in the near- or far-term.

Escape Pod leans in the direction of escapism, hope and optimism rather than grimness and gloom. We love to see funny stories, which can include dark humor that doesn’t punch down, and satire that isn’t painfully bleak. Remember that the failure mode of irony is sincerity, so if you’re mocking something, be sure you’re hitting the right target.

We’re not interested in stories that contain sexual assault, rape, child abuse, animal cruelty, gore, or horror. We also do not want to see stories that treat the hardships of marginalized people or groups as thought experiments. While we may have published stories with that type of content in the past, they are not currently a good fit for Escape Pod.

Our primary audience is adult listeners and readers. Strong language and sexual situations are fine, but we are not an erotica market.

We publish our stories in text and audio, but audio is our primary format. Because our audience cannot easily reread or skim, we prefer stories of high clarity and tight pacing. Complex syntax, elaborate structures and typographic novelties (e.g. footnotes) are difficult for us to publish.

For original fiction, we want stories from 1,500 to 6,000 words (our sweet spot is 2,000 to 4,000), and for reprints we accept 1,500 to 7,500 words.

We look forward to seeing what your democratic futures hold!

New Officer on the Bridge

“Change is the essential process of all existence.” Or so Mr. Spock once said, and who are we to argue with that logic?

Premee Mohamed is disembarking from our starship, and we wish her all the best as she journeys on to other spaces and times. She’s been an assistant editor here since 2021, helping to steer the associate editors and sort through submissions with her keen scientific skills. We have no doubt that she’ll continue to shine as brightly as the stars around us, and we’ll miss her.

We’re happy to announce that Phoebe Barton has accepted a promotion into the assistant editor post. Phoebe Barton is a queer trans science fiction writer who has been an associate editor at Escape Pod for years. Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Analog, Lightspeed, and F&SF, and she is a Nebula Award finalist and Aurora Award winner. She lives with her family, a robot, and many books under a mountain in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

We can’t wait to continue exploring the final frontier with Phoebe on the bridge. Onward and upward!

Awards Eligibility Post for 2023 works

[Insert pithy observation about how quickly time flies here.]

The deadline for the Nebula nominations is bearing down on us (March 1) and the Hugo nomination deadline is soon after (March 9). If you’re looking for short fiction to nominate, please consider our authors’ works below.

In 2023, Escape Pod published 13 original science fiction stories and 32 reprint stories. High points included publishing  our 900th story and presenting a time travel month.

As a whole, Escape Pod is eligible for Best Semiprozine, and co-editors Mur and Valerie are eligible for Best Editor (Short form).

Here are the original stories published last year:

* Author eligible for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer

A Change in Crew

As Octavia Butler said, “All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change.”

Escape Pod is changing as our longtime Assistant Editor, Ben Kinney, leaves the bridge. Ben has been part of the crew since 2016, and he’s seen many of the changes we’ve gone through: the shift from Submittable to Moksha, from volunteer staff to paid staff, from private company to non-profit. Not to mention the co-editors transitions!

Ben has also helped to change Escape Pod for the better through his tireless work. From recruiting and overseeing the associate editors to navigating the galaxy of submissions we receive, Ben’s guidance and vision have kept our ship flying at warp speed. His knowledge of science and of what makes a good story are some of the reasons the podcast has been so successful in recent years. We will miss him.

Taking up Ben’s post is Kevin Wabaunsee. Kevin is a speculative fiction writer and a former newspaper reporter. He is a professional science news editor and the former managing editor for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). He is a Prairie Band Potawatomi. His short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, PseudoPod, Apex, and the anthology Fighting for the Future. You can find him online at kevinwabaunsee.com. We’re excited to discover what changes Kevin has in store for us in the future.

A few parting words from Ben himself:

“It’s been a pleasure serving as the pod’s Assistant Editor for the last six years. Escape Pod is a fantastic project, from every story I’ve read, down to every piece of feedback I’ve sent out; and it’s a fantastic team, from the insightful co-Editors, to the inspirational co-owners, and every hard-working Associate Editor who’s joined the family. But as much as I love every week’s escape into the void, my life is stretched too thin and it’s time for me to cut back my commitments before I burn out. The pod is as amazing as ever under the hood, and I can’t wait to see where Kevin and Premee will take that engine. For the rest of you: thanks for listening and reading, and fly safe out there.”

January 2023 Metacast

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:25 — 13.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Presenters: Marguerite Kenner and Alasdair Stuart

Hey folks, welcome to an Escape Artists metacast. I’m Marguerite Kenner. And I’m Alasdair Stuart.

For those of you who have never heard a metacast before, think of this like a mini State of the Union address, a way for us to update you about what’s been happening at EA. The big thing is our news that EA now stands for the Escape Artists Foundation — we’ve become a nonprofit. We want to share with you how we got there, answer some questions, and explain what it means for you. (Continue Reading…)

XO Reporting for Duty

Greetings, fellow Pod people!

I’m Valerie Valdes, the new co-editor here at Escape Pod. I’m extremely excited to be taking over the co-pilot seat from S.B. Divya, and I hope to ensure a continued smooth flight for all our passengers and crew.

But who am I? A riddle wrapped in an enigma? A miserable pile of secrets?

I’m a writer! My space (cat) opera trilogy starts with Chilling Effect, which was shortlisted for the 2021 Arthur C. Clarke Award. I also commit poetry and short fiction and the occasional essay, some already published, some forthcoming. I mostly write stuff that is fun, funny and at least a little satirical. Every time someone compares me to Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, I hum the victory music from Final Fantasy.

Beyond writing, I volunteer as a municipal liaison for National Novel Writing Month, which means I try to help other writers get words on page or screen. I also play video games on Twitch a few nights a week, which I call “Mandatory Fun” because otherwise I would simply not stop working. I’m Cuban-American and I spent most of my life in Miami, which seeps into my work in myriad ways, especially the cussing. Right now, I live in Georgia with my husband, kids and cats, all of us currently suffering from seasonal allergies.

Perhaps the most important thing to know about me is that I possess a firm and unwavering love of spreadsheets, which I am told will serve me well in this endeavor.

What can you expect from my tenure here? This magazine is called Escape Pod, not Sad Reality Pod, so my preferences will lean toward escapist fiction. Send me your fun, quirky, hopeful and heartfelt stories. Make me laugh, even if I’m also crying. Restore a little of my lost faith in humanity, even if you’re showing me the violence inherent in the system.

With that, it’s time to buckle up and take off. I hope we all enjoy the ride!

-Valerie

Flash Fiction Contest 2022

Beware the Ides of April: Escape Pod’s Flash Fiction contest returns on April 15, 2022!

Submissions will be open from April 15-30, 2022, via a dedicated portal on Moksha.

To be a valid submission to the contest, each story must adhere to the following rules:

  1. The story must be no more than 500 words long, not including its title. Do not use the title to skirt around the word count. Word count will be determined using Microsoft Word.
  2. Each author may submit only ONE story.
  3. The story must adhere to the general Escape Pod submission guidelines. Most importantly, it needs to be a science fiction story; other genres, including horror and fantasy, are discouraged. As a general rule, we will take a very liberal view of what constitutes science fiction, but authors should note that experience shows that stories that attempt to skirt the genre restriction tend to fare badly in the voting.
  4. The story must be original and previously unpublished. If your story was published on your public blog or your Patreon or in your newsletter, it is considered previously published and is ineligible. If it has been posted only to a private critique group, it has not been previously published and is eligible. If you have a question, send a query to phoebe@escapeartists.net with the subject line “QUERY” and ask before submitting. Please do not submit stories that have been entries in any previous Escape Artists contest. Note that contest stories will be posted on a members-only portion of the forum, so first publication rights will not be spent by entering.
  5. The person submitting the story must be the story’s author (or acting for the author with express permission) and hold full publishing rights to the story.
  6. The story must be submitted in its final form, as the author intends it to be read by the voting public. We will not allow authors to submit changes to stories.
  7. The title, byline, and text should be included in the submission. Any byline will be stripped when the stories are posted in the contest, and will be revealed when the story does not advance, or at the close of the contest. Feel free to use a pseudonym for the byline, but we will need a legal name if you win for the contract.
  8. Authors under 18 are welcome. By submitting, any author under 18 asserts they have obtained the permission of a parent or guardian with whom Escape Artists, Inc. can enter into a contract on behalf of the author.

The three stories with the highest votes will be published on Escape Pod. Authors will be paid $40 USD, making this a pro sale of at least eight cents a word.

Please share widely and loudly!

hot mature website