Fiction (Canadian submissions ONLY)

This form is for "Canadian writers." Please use this form if you live within Canadian territories and provinces, or are a Canadian resident who lives overseas. Since our eligibility for national and local grants depends on a majority of our published content being Canadian, we kindly request that only Canadian writers use this form. Please see our international submission form if you do not meet the preceding residency/citizenship criteria.

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Open call for submissions for Room 50.2, edited by Rachel Thompson, Hamdah Shabbir, Nicole Opong-Agyare, and Selin Berktas.

Send us your best work on any theme that takes risks, refuses, and questions the status quo.

We’re drawn to writing about societal constructs, the various arms of fascism, and everything strange in between, including work that examines prioritizing human-made writing and art in this era of AI. We love essays that squint and question; necessary short stories that reflect the times, yet resist easy lessons; and poems that give us wings to fly towards something greater.

We also seek art of different mediums, layered work, altered photographs, comix, images that bend the familiar or are hard to look away from—surprise us!

Underrepresented writers, including but not exclusive to women (cis and trans), trans men, Two Spirit and non-binary writers who are Black, Indigenous, people of colour, queer, and/or disabled, are particularly encouraged to submit.

Before submitting, please read our About section to see if your work fits within Room’s mandate, then refer to the Submission Guidelines on how to format your work.

Submissions open September 13, 2026 and will be accepted on a rolling basis until we reach our submissions limit.  

Guidelines:

• Before submitting, please read about us to see if your work fits within Room’s mandate.
• Your entry must be original and unpublished (in print or online)
• We accept submissions up to 3500 words. Longer submissions will be rejected automatically.
• Please submit in 12 point font. Times New Roman preferred but not required. 
• We gladly accept simultaneous submissions. If another publication accepts your work for publication, please notify us and withdraw your piece immediately.
• Please do not send a second submission in the same genre until you have heard back from us considering the first one (Note: You may enter our contests and submit a regular submission at the same time so long as the materials are different.)