What We Are

We began as a free print pamphlet featuring just one short story fifteen years ago, then a pocket-sized monthly magazine—still free—with a handful of short stories and the occasional spot of nonfiction and poetry, published according to theme, for the reading pleasure of London commuters.

Today Litro is one of the largest read literary and short stories magazine in the UK.

The online platform accompanies the monthly print edition, and is now a fully-fledged literary and creative arts platform a place for readers, writers and the broader creative community to discuss various aspects of literature, fiction, arts & culture through features, reviews, non themed fiction, interviews, columns and more. All these forms have the capacity to uplift and transport us. We aim to discover new emerging writers and give them a platform to be read alongside stalwarts of the literary scene.

You can submit your work to any of our platforms: Litro Magazine, Litro Online, or our podcast, Litro Lab. Please read the guidelines carefully.

Please note that it may take us anytime from two weeks to six months to accept or reject your submission. If you haven’t heard from us, you can assume we’re still considering your work.

Litro Magazine

Any questions? Contact Eric Akoto.

What we accept:

For our print magazine, we only accept short fiction, flash/micro fiction, nonfiction (memoir, literary journalism, travel narratives, etc), and original artwork (photographs, illustrations, paintings, etc) based on the designated monthly theme. Works translated into English are also welcome.

What we don’t accept:

We do publish poetry and novel extracts, but not on an unsolicited basis, so please do not submit any poetry or novel extracts to us—they will not be read.

Upcoming themes & deadlines:

Black Lives Matter (Deadline January 18, 2021) Submit Here.

(Deadline January 18, 2021) Loneliness (Deadline, February 11th 2021) Submit Here.

(Deadline, February 11th 2021) Drifting Islands, Japan (Published in Spring 2021) Closed

(Published in Spring 2021) Friendship (Deadline, January 11, 2021) Submit Here.

Requirements:

All submitted work must be your own.

Submitted work must not have been previously published—either in print or online. You can submit the same piece to other publications at the same time, but we ask that you withdraw your submission from Litro immediately when it is accepted elsewhere. We do, however, publish original translations if the work has previously appeared in another language.

Due to print space restrictions, each piece should be about 4,000 words, give or take a little. This is a guideline, not an absolute limit; and in exceptional cases, we will take longer pieces, but in any case no longer than 5,000 words.

Due to the volume of submissions we receive, please submit only one piece per theme. Additional submissions will unfortunately not be considered. You can submit stories for different themes simultaneously, though we should add that if we choose one story for a particular issue, we wouldn’t normally run another story by the same writer for at least a year to allow room for new authors.

Terms & Conditions:

The Author grants Litro the exclusive license to publish the English language Work, in print, audio and electronic form, throughout the world. The Author retains the right to publish the Work in a booklength collection of the Author’s works, or as part of a volume from which the Work is an extract.

For our full terms and conditions click here.

Litro Online

Any questions? Contact [email protected].

Click here for our rolling calls for submissions page for a list of books, live performance and films we’re looking for reviews on.

What we accept:

At this time, we do not accept poetry submissions for online publication.

How to Submit:

Completed pieces

If you already have a finished piece that can fit into any of our existing categories, please submit here. If you haven’t yet build up many writing samples, it would be best to submit to us a completed piece. If we publish it, you can start pitching to us.

Pitches

Send ideas for anything related to literature and culture—whether columns, interviews, features and reviews—to [email protected].

Everything on reviews or author interviews, send to Interviews.

Anything related to theatre, arts or live events, please get in touch with [email protected]. For anything film-related, please contact Films.

*Please attach a brief biography and CV with your pitches to better reflect your fields of expertise.

Contributors’ Mailing List

Every month, we also have some specific events and book reviews we’d like covered. If you’d like to receive an email from us every month calling for particular submissions, please





Terms & Conditions:

If you are submitting short fiction, flash fiction, nonfiction or poetry, and we choose to publish it on our website, you also afford us the right to reprint your work in possible print, audio or digital anthologies in the future—subject to due notification to the author.

Regrettably, we are unable to pay our contributors at present.

Litro Lab

Any questions? Contact [email protected].

We sometimes feature standalone stories—fiction and nonfiction—on Litro Lab. It can follow the month’s theme, or not, and must be no longer than five minutes.

You can submit here an MP3 recording of your short story; it must be your story, but you can get someone else to read it if you’d prefer (please credit them with a link, if applicable). Please also submit a written version of your piece.

*You can submit MP3s of pieces previously published elsewhere in written form, but please make sure you have the right to let us publish it in audio form. We are not responsible for the copyright infringement of work submitted to us.

Note: We also run audio interviews and readings with authors, episodes exploring a particular theme/subject such as Japanese folk tales, and even real-world reportage. If you’d like to participate — either as a guest or a producer — or if you just have a bright idea, please get in touch with Interviews.