🔥 The embers are alive… 🔥
We are thrilled to announce that after more than a year of hiatus, Pyre Magazine is reigniting its flame!
This spring, we will officially relaunch with an exciting new chapter for the magazine. Over the coming months, we’ll unveil updated submission guidelines, new submission periods, and a revitalized vision for showcasing the best in horror, speculative, weird, and dark literature. We’re also welcoming fresh faces to the editorial team, bringing new perspectives and energy to our mission of amplifying bold, boundary-pushing voices in dark fiction.
For now, however, we remain closed to submissions. We appreciate your patience as we prepare to reopen our inbox. When the time comes, you can expect a clear and transparent process, updated submission criteria, and an enthusiastic invitation to contribute to our growing inferno of literary creativity.
Another significant update: as we embrace this next phase, Pyre Magazine is moving from X (formerly Twitter) to Bluesky Social. Our new digital home reflects our commitment to forging meaningful connections in a fresh and innovative space. Be sure to follow us there for all the latest news, updates, and announcements.
This is an exciting time for Pyre Magazine, and we can’t wait to share what’s ahead. Thank you to everyone who has supported us during this hiatus—your belief in our mission has kept the embers burning. As we prepare to reignite, we’re more committed than ever to delivering the kind of work that sets the literary world aflame.
Stay tuned for more details, and join us as we blaze this new trail. The fire is just getting started.
In the meantime, feel free to connect with us on Bluesky Social, where we’ll share updates as they happen: https://bsky.app/profile/pyremagazine.bsky.social.
It’s here… it’s finally here!
FALL/WINTER 2023 Issue
Purchase Now!
Pyre Magazine Presents its first physical copy edition. 120 beautiful pages full of art, short stories, flash fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. In this slam-packed special edition, you'll find work from more than 30 artists.
Cover image, The Cemetery, created by Sylvain Daudier.
The first physical copy of Pyre Magazine drops on November 28th, and it’s STACKED!
A NOTE ON the 2023 SPRING AND SUMMER SUBMISSIONS
Dear Writers, Artists, and Constant Readers,
First and foremost, I would like to apologize to you. It has been a while since there have been any updates to Pyre, and many are still waiting to hear back from us regarding submissions from the beginning of this year, and for that, I am genuinely sorry. The truth is, I, Ryan, have been dealing with some personal health issues that have made it very difficult for me to engage with submissions and emails mentally. In case you don’t know, Pyre is a labor of love, and running the magazine is primarily a team of one… me. Unfortunately, due to needing to focus on my mental and physical health, I had to make the difficult decision to cancel the Spring and Summer 2023 issue because I did not have the time to give submissions the proper amount of time and consideration that they deserved.
That being said, if you have a submission with us and have not heard back, all spring and summer submissions will be considered for the fall/winter issue, which will now be a larger issue that covers the entire year. I know many of you are eager to hear back from us and are tired of waiting, and as a writer myself, I understand entirely. That is why Pyre is and has always been a magazine that allows for simultaneous submissions so that, at least while you are waiting, you can submit to other outlets.
I appreciate your understanding during this time. I plan to have the magazine running smoothly by the end of summer so that the fall/winter submission cycle will go off without a hitch.
Thank you.
Best wishes,
Ryan LaBee
Editor-in-Chief Pyre Magazine
Fall/Winter 2022
Coming: November 16th
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Item description
Spring/Summer 2022
contents
Spring/Summer Issue — 2022
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Denny E. Marshall — Steam Stomper
Evangeline Gallagher — The Goat
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The Mix-Up — Abbie Doll
The child was born whispering. I am recycled. I am recycled. No one knew what it meant or why a child fresh from the womb could speak. It arrived with the preformed face of a ghoulish man—a dark receding hairline, deflated cheeks, and two catatonic eyes the color of charcoal. When it smiled, its lips converged forcibly like sewn skin, and the expression fell flat without extending to its eyes. Though technically toothless, its grins left a lingering impression of fangs. The parents weren’t so sure they wanted this anymore.
Fisher Witch — Josh Pearce
Scarlet's lover called her a witch the day he ended things, even though that wasn't quite fair—she only knew the one spell. She whispered it to herself as she sharpened the point of her favorite fishhook, scraping it against the strop over and over, until the steel fairly glimmered with its own light.
Savoring the Taste — Belicia Rhea
A worm has chewed an exit through the body to your left’s eye. It slinks up the nose and out through the right nostril, tail only lost for a moment before its pink head reappears.
My Little Macbeth — Scarlett Murray
On the night it happened, my son asked me to tuck him in. It did not sound cute or small, it did not contain the faint echo of what his voice as a baby had been. Instead, it twisted into what it would become: I heard its rigid hardness, the rigid hardness of a man. It was like the voice of a twenty-year-old calling his mother to tuck him in, and it unsettled me.
Bleed Mean — A. Morgan-Penn
I was fourteen the first time I considered killing my father. Every night, I’d steeple my raw, red fingers and pray for him to die. I didn’t care how. I didn’t care why. I just wanted to be rid of him. To go just one day without his silver belt-buckle biting into the skin of my back.
A darkness pooled in the pit of my belly that summer, as mean and tarry as a gator pit. Cut me and it could have slid out.
The Devouring Hole — Eric Raglin
Sun-punished and rain-starved, berries withered on the bush like shrunken heads. They were sour and tough as leather, but young Torsten and his older sister Estrid ate their fill. When the berries disappeared and the creeks ran dry, food became scarce. There were no salmon fat with orange clusters of eggs, nor red squirrels thinning in their summer coats. The siblings grew hungry. Meat melted off their ribs, leaving their bodies feeble. Prayers to the Old Gods went unanswered.
ANGLERFISH IN LOVE — Zoë Skoti
i. before
At first, there’s nothing. The world is black and cold, a pulsing throat, and you’re stuck right in its
center.
No operations are conducted to pull you out. No tweezers delve into the universe’s gullet, or try to
drag you out alongside strings of blood and tissue. But you still know when you’re not welcome:
when you try to curl into yourself, the world tries to swallow you down in turn; a burning, breathless
pressure. When you try to stretch, it scrambles to spit you up, spasms like an exposed nerve.
Canvas —Lynne Inouye
$5 Face Paint. A sign is etched into a rotten framework; the letters are peeling, flaking, in the summer heat. A small business, situated between the ring toss and a donut stand—nestled in the yellowing grass. The days are long; the shifts are longer, but she weathers them all the same.
Better than Flesh — Shelby Dollar
“What the hell is a bob-a-thon?” Karl asked, passing beneath the cross-stitched banner as he followed Janine to join the small crowd surrounding the barn. It was the usual set-up, a keg on ice and thudding music, but then he saw it—a water tank large enough for cattle, metal splotchy with pale lichen and blossoms of rust.
Not This One — by Ai Jiang
“Let me see your face,” I drawled. A hologram projected outward from the glass screen on my desk’s surface. The floating face without its body was the same one my virtual lover displayed yesterday.