Thank you for your interest in contributing to The Bombay Literary Magazine (TBLM). We are now CLOSED for submissions.
Our forthcoming issue (No. 54): April 15, 2023.
Submission period for Issue 55 (August Issue): April 16, 2023 — May 31, 2023.
NOTE: The Submissions Form will be made available once we are open for submissions.
We publish three times a year: April, August and December, respectively. We publish fiction, poetry, and graphic fiction. You are welcome to send us translations, but please indicate clearly on your manuscript that it is a translation. We also publish essays, reviews and interviews, but currently we do so on a commissioned basis.
Payment: We pay an honorarium of Rs. 5,000 (approx. $65) per contribution.
Submission Guidelines
We learn a submission is incomplete only quite late in the process. It’s usually too late to do anything at that point. So please check that you meet the following guidelines. In other words, please check you meet the following guidelines.
- Please send us just one previously unpublished submission. We consider personal blogs as publications. Also if you send us multiple submissions (that is, more than one story or one set of five poems) we will only consider your last submission.
- Please make sure to include your name and email address in the document itself.
- Cover letters are optional, and we always read the other material first. But we do like to learn about our authors.
- Fiction submissions: submit one short story between 2,000-7,000 words. Regrettably, we do not publish flash fiction, novellas, or novels.
- Poetry submissions: please submit five poems, all in one document. We usually select three to four poems per contributor. Please do not send us fewer than five poems— we wish to understand your range and style through a substantial sample. We are publishing a poet, not a poem.
- You may send your work to other outlets (i.e. we are fine with simultaneous submissions). However, please inform us if your work has been selected elsewhere. We remember such acts of courtesy. Also, if one or more poems from your submission are accepted for publication elsewhere, then we’ll mark your whole submission as withdrawn.
