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.
You can expect to hear from us within four weeks. If it's been five weeks and you haven't received a response, please do send us a note to enquire!
Half Mystic Press publishes poetry, essay, and short story collections; drama; memoirs; novellas; full-length novels; and experimental work. We do not publish books of genre, lyrics without music, or critical work.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 At least three-quarters of the book should be previously unpublished in any form.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.
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 do send us a note to enquire!
We are currently open to interview requests from musicians and bands. Interviews are published on our blog, sent to our mailing list, and promoted on our social media.
We interview musicians working in all genres, all languages, all countries. We do ask that potential interviewees have at least one LP, or at least two EPs, available for sale on Bandcamp and/or music streaming services. To request an interview, please send a cover letter, links to where we can find you online, and—if applicable—a press kit.
We highly recommend that you read past interviews on the Half Mystic blog to get a feel for our style, aesthetic, and how we engage with featured musicians. We do not write music reviews, and we do not host single, LP, or EP premieres.
You can expect to hear back from us within two weeks. If it's been three weeks and you haven't received a response to your submission, please do send us a note to enquire!
In our celebration of music in all its forms, Half Mystic Journal is proud to spotlight one contemporary visual artist per issue, known as our Featured Artist. We typically conduct an interview with them for our blog and journal, feature 13 to 15 of their pieces in the issue, and showcase their work on our website. The suite of pieces we feature is always inspired in some way by the issue's theme, the poetry and prose in the issue, and the idea of music as a whole.
To apply to illustrate our next issue, please send a cover letter and five to ten examples of previous art, in any medium. Colour and black-and-white work are both accepted, and your portfolio need not be music-centred. Should you be chosen as a featured artist, we'll be in touch within two weeks to discuss the theme we have in mind for you to illustrate.