Submission Call: Stories about games
For short stories about games, sports, and all the ways in which people play with each other.
Deadline: Open now. Deadline Friday, 30th May, 2025.
Word count: 1,000-10,000 words
Submission fee: standard (see submission guidelines).
Payment and rights: standard (see submission guidelines).
How to submit: Read the submission guidelines, then send us your story through our submission form. Choose the ‘Stories about Games’ submission type at the top of the form.
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From children's play to world-shaping political negotiations, there's an element of gaming to be found everywhere in life.
In this themed call we're looking for short stories that feature games of all kinds, from board games, through video games and sports, to the kinds of games that people play in their daily interactions, from the joyful and whimsical to the downright sinister. We want to read about things that happen in board game cafes, on football pitches, in boardrooms, bedrooms, front rooms, casinos, and government offices.
How do we express ourselves through play? How do we use gaming to make connections with other people? How have we used games to rebuild social relationships since the Covid lockdowns? Why do we play at all? What good does it do us, and what harm? And what are the connections between gaming and storytelling?
We'll be exploring aspects of our new theme between now and the end of May, both here on our website and in our email newsletter. (If you don't already receive our newsletter, you can sign up here.)
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As always with our themed submission calls, it's important that you feel free to interpret the theme loosely if you want to. Experiment, and find your own angle on it. Even if we feel your story strays too far from the theme, we will still consider it as a general submission.
The stories we select from this submission call will feature in a future Fiction Desk anthology. Every publisher is different, so if you've not yet read one of our anthologies, it’s well worth reading a recent volume before you submit. Our latest anthology, Inside Voices, is out now.
