Thank you for your interest in contributing to The Bombay Literary Magazine (TBLM). We are now CLOSED for submissions for Issue 55. Publication date for Issue 55 is: August 15, 2023.
Notifications regarding submissions for Issue 55: after July 15, 2023. If you haven’t heard from us by August 5, check with us at help@bombaylitmag.com. NOTE: Before checking with us, please check your spam/promotions folder. Gmail occasionally misclassifies emails.
Submission period for Issue 56 (December): September 01, 2023 — September 30, 2023
We publish three times a year: April, August and December, respectively. We publish fiction, poetry, translated fiction/poetry and graphic fiction. We also publish photo/video narratives, essays and interviews, but currently we do so on a commissioned basis.
Payment: We pay an honorarium of Indian rupees 5,000 (approx. $61) per contribution.
Submission Guidelines
We usually learn a submission is incomplete only quite late in the process. By then it’s often too late to do anything and we have to set the submission aside. So please check that you meet the following guidelines. In other words, please check you meet the following guidelines.
- Send us just one submission. We don’t accept previously published material. This includes content that has appeared on blogs. If you send us multiple submissions (please don’t), 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 Regrettably, we do not publish flash fiction, novellas, or novels.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.
- TRANSLATIONS: We believe that translators and editors have a special responsibility to ensure that a translation doesn’t take undue liberties with the meaning of the original text. This means translations require considerable more time and effort from everyone. Therefore, the acceptance process works a little differently for translations. With regard to translations, initially, all acceptance are conditional accepts. Before we can publish a translation, we need to verify that (1) you have the translation rights for the narrative; and (2) you can send us a pdf or docx copy of the original text. Based on a comparison with the original, we can make a final decision on whether to go ahead with publication. The edited version of the translation will be slotted for publication in the earliest possible issue of the magazine.
- You may send your work to other outlets (i.e. we are fine with simultaneous submissions). However, please inform us (help@bombaylitmag.com) 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.
