Sage Cigarettes Magazine is a hybrid literary & arts magazine that produces quarterly literary issues & publishes a series of columns, stand-alone articles, & pop culture reviews.
We exist to support & platform independent artists & creatives in various genres —writers, podcasters, readers, artists, & musicians.
We are a volunteer-run independent press. We are not currently a paying market but nominate for awards annually & can include kofi or other tip jar links in the writer’s bio.
Submissions are always free. Simultaneous submissions are encouraged but please have the courtesy to let us know immediately if you get picked up elsewhere.
General submission guidelines
- Authors published with Sage Cigarettes retain all rights to their work.
- Every submission must include a short contributor bio & preferred method of contact.
- Simultaneous submissions are encouraged but please let us know ASAP if your work was accepted elsewhere.
- Previously published pieces will be considered but please be sure that that you are in the clear with any agreement made with your previous publisher & let us know who previously published the work & when.
- Please include a list of trigger warnings in the body of your email if applicable.
- Any work submitted which is found to be racist, bigoted, hateful and/or work which promotes gratuitous or sexual violence will not be published and may result in the writer being banned from submitting and from our socials.
- We will remove or reject work by any submitter or contributor we find to have plagiarized or been racist, misogynistic, homophobic, ableist or hateful in the literary community.
- For written work, we prefer that authors use 12 point serif fonts. Poetry should be formatted however the author prefers the work to be presented, fiction & CNF should be formatted 1.5 to double spaced. We prefer .doc files but can accommodate .pdf as well.
- For art, we prefer .png & .jpg, files. We can accommodate .gif or .pdf as an initial submission but will need a higher resolution .png or .jpg if the submission is successful.
Plagiarism & AI Policy
All successful submissions must be the original work of the author. Any quotations or references to outside media must be clearly cited.
With pop culture pieces, we understand that authors may include quotations from the original material. However, we require all quotations to be clearly defined & cited in accordance with Fair Use guidelines. Lyrics are a particular sticking point due to strict copyright laws & we encourage authors to quote clearly & sparingly.
We also do not accept submissions that utilize generative AI (assistive AI tools for dictation, basic spelling & grammar checks, etc. are fine). At this moment, available generative AI has massive copyright implications that are not only contrary to our personal ethics, but beyond our scope & resources as an independent literary magazine.
Ultimately, this policy is here to protect our platform & our authors. All authors sign a release to verify that their work is original and belongs to them. Any work in breach of this agreement will be immediately pulled from our archives & the author will be ineligible for future calls.
Current open calls
All submissions are currently closed for the remainder of 2025. Check back in January for our 2026 calendar.