Submissions are now open for Manawaker Studio Zines, a pet project of Manawaker Studio’s EiC, CB Droege (That’s me)
I am specifically looking for submissions of speculative mini-zines.
I don’t want to be too prescriptive with this one because, by their nature, a zine should do it’s own thing. Thus the only hard requirement is that it must be speculative in nature. These could be comics, short stories, poems, art or anything else, as long as it’s science fiction or fantasy (even if only barely), and fits on 8 tiny pages. However, there are few things I can tell you would increase your chances of acceptance:
It doesn’t need to be content that a child would grok, but please keep it family friendly (No gore, no explicit sex, use profanity sparingly). General guideline: Would you feel uncomfortable if a 12 year old picked up the zine? If so, maybe it’s not right for us this call.
It’s a tiny book! A single sheet of paper (A4 in this case) folded into a 8-page booklet (including the cover pages), essentially creating a story in 6 A7 (aprox 7x10cm) pages and one A6 (14×10) cover image. The content can be anything. Traditionally zines have been used for comics, photo arrays, or illustrated poetry and short fiction. While a zine can be only text, usually zines are very designed with little white space, and often (unless it’s a photobook) lots of hand-drawn flourishes and illustrations. Your zine doesn’t have to be like that, but I’d like to see zines that use the space and form effectively, and if it’s only images, It’s nice if those images tell a story.
In the future, I’ll use this space to show off some examples of what some of the zines we’ve accepted look like, but we just opened this call, and haven’t accepted any zines yet.
If you haven’t started on your zine yet, and want a template, you’re in luck! I made you one.
That’s a valid question! It’s especially important considering the origins and continuing use of zines as tools of underground movements and countercultures who might not have access to traditional publishing. The zine is a low-investment way to get a message out, and it’s typically a personal and local adventure. To some folks, having a zine ‘published’, even by a small indie press like Manawaker, might seem counter-intuitive, and if you are that some: Okay!
However, having a zine distributed by a publisher gives it a wider audience, and a connection to the publisher’s catalog. Also: The publishing deal Manawaker will ask for is very straightforward and would not stop the zine’s creator from doing whatever else they would have done with it. That’s because Manawaker will never ask for exclusive print rights to any zine, even for a limited time. The creator of the zine will simply get paid once for granting non-exclusive print rights to Manawaker Studio, and thereafter has no obligation to Manawaker. If you’d like to see what the contract looks like. It’s right here!
Another good question! I’m using ‘speculative’ here as an umbrella term for what you might call Science-fiction and Fantasy. More clearly: We’d like to see anything that is not about our real world, right now. Speculative stories might have robots, wizards, dragons, aliens, magic, cybernetic implants, unicorns, or faster-than-light travel, but they don’t have to have any of those things. Speculative stories can be about joy or fear for the future or the harsh realities or fun fantasies of the distant past, or a past that never really existed. There is no particular tone we are looking for, we just want to see tiny stories that go somewhere unreal, not-yet-here, or almost-was.
Most zines historically have been about the here and now. They are about the struggles of a community or the joys of the artist in the moment of creation. This is an important tradition and I don’t want to step on that, but this project is about seeing where else the form can go.
If accepted for publication, the creator of the zine will be offered an honorarium depending upon the finishedness of the work. For reference, an already formatted-for-print speculative mini-zine with cover and illustrations might get offered 20$
Simply send your mini-zine (preferably as a PDF or PNG, but other common formats are also fine (if we can’t open it, we’ll ask you for something else) and at least 300 dpi) to submissions@manawaker.com with the subject line “Mini-zine submission – [title] – [name]”. Please send the file directly (no third-party services or cloud storage links). It’s okay if it’s currently formatted for American (8.5’x11′) paper. It’s not that far off from A4. We can find a way to make it fit. :)
I’ll try to respond to all submissions quickly, but it might take as much as a few months depending on volume of response.
There is no deadline and no publishing schedule. This is a bit of an experiment for me, and it’s just began (open call was first posted in August 2026), and I don’t know how many subs we will get. I wont publish until I have at least a few to start the collection with. That might happen by September. It might not happen until 2030. I’m willing to admit that I don’t know!
Any Questions? Please send them to me: cb@manawaker.com. I’m probably forgetting something important on this page, so questions might help me clarify the call. :)