Strange Hymnal is a literary magazine of mystery, ritual, and obsession. A biome of writing and art that worships the strange and unusual. An investigation of liminal spaces, the ineffable, the profane, the god that lives inside the car wash. A made religion, consumed by possibility, the duality of self, the tension between fear and curiosity, the seen and unseen.

Email us at editor (at) strangehymnal (dot) com. Submit up to 5 pieces as a single .doc, .docx or PDF. 5,000-word limit. We accept art, hybrid work, poetry, essays, short stories, translations of the dead.

We’re especially interested in seeing work from BIPOC writers and artists, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, neurodivrse and disabled creators, folks from rural places, makers both emerging and late-career, and folks who make hard-to-categorize art: poems in a series, hybrid writing, mixed-media art, art with digital elements, so on and on.

We like:

• Unreliable narrators
• Irreverence
• Gray ideas of reality
• Nonhuman entanglements
• Subversive formal poetry
• Narrative poetry
• Mystery + the inaccessible
• The awareness of people as characters
• Essays that ask more than they answer
• Things made for the joy of making
• The place where language falls away

Keep in mind:

• We do accept simultaneous submissions, though please let us know if a piece is accepted elsewhere.
• We don’t accept previously published work.
• Signing our accepted work contract means we’ll retain worldwide first serial rights, worldwide first electronic rights, and the right to use your work in promotional materials. This means that after Strange Hymnal publishes your work, copyright reverts back to you and you can do whatever you want with your own work.
• At this time, we can’t offer payment for your work, though this is something we’d love to do in the future. If you know of any rich patrons of the arts, tell them to DM us.
• If your work is accepted, don’t send us more work until at least one year has passed since the publication of your issue.
• We don’t care about cover letters. This isn’t a job and we’re just two little guys. We just ask you to say hi, be nice, and give us whatever information you’d like us to know before diving into your work.
• We’re a small team, but we’ll try to respond to your submission within thirty days. If it’s been, like, six months without hearing from us, feel free to give us a gentle nudge.