Submissions are open for Opus II, Issue II of Half Mystic Journal. Our twelfth issue celebrates the theme of sevdah. We’re looking for violin solos, velvet on bare skin, half lights, broken odes, empty airport terminals, redamancy, zinnias at the edge of wilting, damask curtains, clipped swans’ wings, inosculation, heroic crowns, the memory of a late-night lake with a long-gone lover, when the sky and water turned the same colour and met at the edge of the world. 

Sevdah is a genre of Turkish and Bosnian folk music evoking sorrowful love and ecstatic, amorous yearning—from the Arabic “sawda,” meaning “black bile,” or a melancholy state of longing. In Issue II of our second opus, desire is holy and heavy as the still before the train comes. Moor us in the unquenchable. We want a begging to believe in.

Half Mystic Journal publishes all genres of poetry, prose, creative nonfiction, translations, and experimental work. We ask that each piece pertains to music and the sevdah theme.

Submit up to five pieces, up to 3000 words each. We do not accept previously-published writing, including on personal blogs and social media. Simultaneous submissions are welcome. We only publish predominantly English pieces, or pieces translated to English.

For translations, please include the full text of the original piece in your submission. Include a statement declaring that you have the author’s permission to publish the translation, or that the original text is in the public domain.

We recommend that you read Half Mystic Journal’s past issues to understand our aesthetic and the types of work we typically publish.

You can expect to hear from us within four weeks. If it's been five weeks and you haven't received a response, please send us a note to enquire!

Half Mystic Press publishes poetry, essay, and short story collections; memoirs; novellas and full-length novels; and hybrid and experimental work. We do not publish lyrics without music or critical work.

Please note that, unlike in our journal, we do publish books that are not overtly music-themed. When we ask for music, we mean rhythm, we mean story, we mean luminescence and chaos, pulsing loneliness, ordinary madness, thunder on loop, violent quietude, shivering wonder. We mean truth. We mean work that we can’t help but listen to on repeat, work that makes us believe in something bigger than all this endless static.

When we ask for music, we mean the undefined and the indefinable. Send us your symphony. We won’t flinch.

Your manuscript must be at least 60 pages and complete. At least three-quarters of the book should be previously unpublished in any form. We welcome simultaneous submissions, and submissions from both agented and unagented writers. We only publish predominantly English manuscripts, and we pay competitive royalties.

For poetry, essay, and short story collections, please send the full manuscript; for all other genres, please send the first half of the manuscript. We read all submissions anonymously, so don’t include identifying information in the manuscript file.

We recommend that you read past books from Half Mystic Press to get a feel for our aesthetic and the types of work we love.

You can expect to hear back from us within eight months. If it's been nine months and you haven't received a response, please send us a note to enquire!