Escape Pod is pleased to announce a new special project for 2021: Black Future Month, a month-long celebration of Black voices in science fiction.

We are excited to have Brent Lambert of FIYAH Magazine as our guest editor. For this special event, we are only accepting submission from authors of the African diaspora and the African continent. This is an intersectional definition of Blackness, and we strongly encourage submissions from women, members of the LGBTQIA community, and members from other underrepresented communities within the African diaspora.

Episodes will air in the month of October and feature two original works of short fiction as well as two reprints.

Submissions will be open from March 1 – April 30. Stories must be between 1,500 – 5,000 words, and manuscripts do not need to be anonymized.

Pay rate, content, and format will follow Escape Pod’s regular guidelines.

The term Black Future Month is inspired by N.K. Jemisin’s essay titled, “How Long ’til Black Future Month,” (as well as a recent short story collection with the same title), and timing is aligned with Black Speculative Fiction Month (October).

Submit your stories via our Moksha Portal for this project!

We’re down to the final stories in the flash fiction contest! Final voting will run from Fri, Jun 5, 2020 and close Fri, Jun 12, 2020, with the top three stories being crowned the winners of the contest.

Contest voting is open to everyone, not only authors who entered stories! Find all the details at our community forums.

Voting is now open for the semi-final round of our flash fiction contest! Semi-final voting will run from Wed, May 27, 2020 close Wed, Jun 3, 2020 (just after midnight UTC).

Contest voting is open to everyone, not only authors who entered stories! Find all the details at our community forums.

Voting is now open for our flash fiction contest! Preliminary rounds of voting will run weekly through May 25, 2020. Semi-final voting will run from May 27, 2020 to June 3, 2020, and the finalists will be determined starting June 5, 2020.

Contest voting is open to everyone, not just authors who entered stories! Find all the details at our community forums.

Submissions to the Flash Fiction Contest have now closed. We received a total of 224 stories!

Preliminary rounds of voting will run from April 27, 2020 through May 25, 2020. Semi-final voting will run from May 27, 2020 to June 3, 2020, and the finalists will be determined starting June 5, 2020.

Contest voting is open to everyone, not just authors who entered stories! Find all the details at our community forums.

It’s no joke: Escape Pod’s Flash Fiction contest returns on April 1, 2020!

Submissions will be open from April 1-15, 2020, 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 Scrivener.
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 darusha@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!

Attention Escape Pod fans! We are so happy to announce our first ever print anthology, coming in October, 2020, from Titan Books, to honor our 15 years of podcasting. Please spread the word and get ready to pre-order!

Escape Artists and Titan Books are delighted to announce the upcoming publication of Escape Pod: The Science Fiction Anthology to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the hit podcast of the same name. Featuring new and exclusive stories from today’s bestselling writers, the collection will publish October 2020 and is the latest addition to Titan Books’ award winning anthology list that includes editors such as George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, Mark Morris, Christopher Golden and Rachel Autumn Deering, & Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan.

Escape Pod has been bringing the finest short fiction to millions all over the world, at the forefront of a new fiction revolution. Founded in 2005 by Serah Eley, Escape Pod is the world’s oldest audio fiction podcast and was a Hugo Award finalist in 2017. Specializing in science fiction, the podcast gives its audience a different story each week that’s fun and engaging, with thought-provoking afterwords from its episode hosts.

This anthology gathers together stories from writers such as Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, Mary Robinette Kowal, John Scalzi, and more, including nine works of original fiction. Editors Mur Lafferty and S.B. Divya have produced the science fiction collection of the year, bringing together bestselling authors in celebration of the publishing phenomenon that is Escape Pod.

ESCAPE POD: THE SCIENCE FICTION ANTHOLOGY
9781789095012 | October 20 2020 | Paperback | £8.99/$14.95 | 368pp