Submissions

Will This Be A Problem now accepts submissions for speculative fiction all year round. While we occasionally put out submission calls for specific projects, such as our anthologies, which may have different qualifiers, the below is the guideline for everything else.

We are currently accepting submissions for Issue V (16th February, 2024 to 16th April, 2024.)

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Your story can be speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy or horror. Genre-mashing is completely fine, however your work must contain strong elements of one of these genres. We strongly encourage character-driven narratives and rich worldbuilding tied together with heavy African influences. 

We only accept submissions from African writers who are 18 years and above. We define an African writer as:-

  • someone born in Africa,
  • someone whose parents (at least one) are African,
  • Africans in the diaspora.

We strongly encourage submissions from women, members of the LGBTQIA community, and members from other underrepresented and marginalised communities. 

We only care about the quality of the writing, storytelling ability, plot and ideas, not whether you are new or established. Only send us work you are proud of; if you don’t like it, our readers won’t. If you’re not sure if your story is suitable, don’t query; please just submit it and let our editors decide.

Our preferred length is between 2500 and 5000 words. However this is just a baseline, if the story is strong enough it can be longer or shorter.

We are open to receiving stories around many themes, but we will immediately reject stories that feature any of the following:

  • Graphic depictions of rape or sexual assault.
  • Needless brutalization of women and children.
  • Depictions of brutalization or abuse of people with (physical and mental) disabilities.
  • Graphic abuse of animals.
  • Themes of necrophilia, paedophilia and other extreme taboo topics.
  • Casual, benevolent or blatant misogyny, bigotry, racism, or any form of decontextualized insensitivity.

We will not consider any of the following:

  • Stories above 10,000 words, including serialized novels or novellas.
  • Partial or incomplete stories. Please don’t send us part of a story and ask us to request the rest if interested.
  • Multiple submissions from the same author.
  • Work that has previously been published.
  • Poetry, non-fiction, scripts, screenplays, fan-fiction and reprints, including anything posted on the internet and blogs.
  • Stories written, co-written, created, or assisted by AI and machine-learning languages such as ChatGPT.

Send your work to willthisbeaproblem@gmail.com as a single Word (doc, docx, odt. or rtf.) document. PDF’s are not allowed. Do not send it in the body of the email. The subject heading should be “WTBAP Fiction Submission by <YOUR NAME>”.

Attach a short bio about yourself (100 – 150 words), what country you’re from and what name you would like the work to be published under.

Submissions should primarily be in English, though pieces of dialogue and the text may contain other languages.

If your piece is accepted, we will contact you within 30 days via email to confirm your interest in being published. Stories selected will undergo editing, copywriting, and proofreading as necessary.

We pay KES 1 per word up to a maximum of KES 5,000 (or the dollar equivalent of the same for non-Kenyan citizens) for each story we publish.