Firewords is the magazine of fiery fiction & poetry brought to life with visual flair. Campfire is our digital serialised offshoot that drops regular bitesized content into your inbox. Every fortnight, come get cosy with us while we toast some marshmallows and tell stories into the night. Each piece will be accompanied by the ‘usual’ amazing, unique and colourful illustrations.
We’ve had our sights on expanding Firewords to publish novels as well as the magazine for a long time. There’s a lot of overlap in the world of book and magazine publishing – printing, distribution, stockists etc. and we have obviously met 100s of talented writers over the years! We’ll be starting slowly with Jen’s (publishing as JJ Scott) debut novel, The Making of Maggie Munroe, and seeing where to go from there.
Set in wartime Glasgow, Scotland, and inspired by stories from JJ’s childhood told to her by her gran, including the revelation that her gran had been proposed to by four different men (talk about a plot twist!), we’re excited to bring the story of Maggie Munroe to the world.
We’ll have more details soon so watch this space.
As it stands, we are still very much continuing to accept orders and send out copies of Firewords. However, due to the ongoing pandemic and UK lockdown, please be aware that delivery times will likely take longer during this time. Please accept our apologies for any delays.
As shipping physical copies is becoming more and more difficult, we have lowered the price of all our digital editions so you can still get Firewords easily. Check out the sale here.
Due to the lack of availability on certain flights, we can not currently offer the usual airmail service to these countries. Orders will therefore be sent by boat and could experience delays of up to 2-12 weeks.
Our competition, in partnership with Bloomsbury and Writers & Artists, has now come to a close! Reading so many stories that all originate from one prompt image has been such an exciting and fun experience. We were blown away by the quality of submissions and it's been a real challenge to choose only 10 entries to make up the following shortlist...
Next, we have to narrow it down even further! The two runners up and overall winner will be announced at the end of November. Watch this space!
Thank you to everyone who took the time to enter this competition. If you didn't make the shortlist, please don't be too disappointed. We received over 550 entries so a lot of amazing stories didn't make it.
Illustrator Maggie Chiang created some beautiful artwork for us in Issue 5, and we’re thrilled to work with her again for a new competition that we are launching today. The challenge is to write a short story (under 1000 words) that is inspired by Maggie’s illustration, above.
The artwork that appears in Firewords is normally created based on the text, so this is a fun contrast to our usual way of doing things and we’re excited to read the results!
The deadline for entries is 31st October and the prizes include publication in our ‘Escape’ themed Issue 8, back issue bundles, and copies of the brand new 2017 Writers' & Artists' Yearbook. It’s a completely free competition, so head over to the Writers & Artists website for more details and how to enter.
Best of luck!
Dan & Jen
While still spreading the word about Issue 6, we are also looking to the future – Submissions for Issue 7 are open now! Here are the facts you need if you want to get involved:
WHEN: Sunday 29th May until Saturday 11th June
WHAT: Short stories (under 2000 words) and flash fiction
WHERE: firewords.co.uk/submit
The loose theme for this issue is ‘Dark/Light’. There will also be our usual flash fiction challenge, with a maximum 400 words based on this visual prompt by illustrator Rondie Li:
We are only open for two weeks this time so don’t hang around. Submissions will open until 11th June and we are only accepting short stories and flash fiction; we received so much great poetry for Issue 6, we felt that some had to be carried forward to this issue.
If you haven’t already done so, check out the newly published ‘Secrets’ edition. Not only a great read, it will also show you the kind of writing that captures our interest for the next submission round.
We can’t wait to see what Issue 7 will hold.
Last year, we just missed the nomination window for the Pushcart Prize and we were kicking ourselves for weeks! This year, we managed to submit our nominations just before the deadline.
In case you haven’t heard of the Pushcart Prize before, it celebrates the work published by small presses and independent magazines in the current year (so for us that means Issue 4 & 5) and prints the winners in a yearly anthology. We wanted to take part because it gives a few of our authors the chance for the acclaim and recognition we think they deserve.
Each publisher is permitted six nominations and we found it extremely challenging to narrow ours down, especially because we have the honour of publishing work of such a high standard. We tried to select a mixture of styles and favourites from different team members. So, without further ado, our nominations for the next Pushcart Prize are:
Psst… If you want the chance to be published in our next issue and perhaps be nominated next year, our submissions open on Dec 17th!
If you’re a fan of magazines yet haven’t heard of Stack, you should really check it out. Stack selects the best independent magazines and delivers a surprise mag to its subscribers every month. Earlier this year, the news that Stack was starting an awards scheme aimed purely at independent magazines was very exciting… and even more exciting was finding out that Firewords had been shortlisted in the ‘Best Original Fiction’ category. Yay!
Here are the awards explained by Stack founder, Steve Watson…
Independent publishers make some of the world’s most exciting and inspiring magazines, but come awards time they’re virtually invisible. The Stack Awards 2015 is our attempt to put that right; an awards scheme made specifically for independent magazines, recognising the best work done by independent publishers and their contributors between October 2014 and September 2015.
The big awards ceremony is on Monday 30th November in London, so wish us luck! To be honest, we aren’t expecting a win because the competition is so strong but just being shortlisted is a huge honour. The other five shortlisted magazines in the ‘Best Original Fiction’ (as well as those in all the other categories) are fantastic, so whichever mag picks up the award will be a worthy winner.
Long live indie mags!
