Android Press

science fiction & fantasy punks

Call for Submissions

What Blooms in Darkness: A Lunarpunk Anthology

Edited by Justine Norton-Kertson

Genre: Lunarpunk and related speculative fiction
Length: 1,500–10,000 words
Language: Stories must be written in English
Submission window: Nov 1-30, 2026
Previously published work: Not accepted
Multiple submissions: Not permitted
Simultaneous submissions: Permitted. Please notify us immediately
if your story is accepted elsewhere.
Formats: DOCX, PDF, standard manuscript format
Expected publication date: Autumn 2027

What kinds of life, culture, and liberation flourish at night,

outside the light of day and extractive institutions?

Android Press is seeking short fiction for What Blooms in Darkness, a new anthology of lunarpunk stories exploring the people, communities, ecologies, and possibilities that thrive beyond the dominant gaze. Some forms of life reach toward the sun. Others bloom beneath moonlight, spread through the soil, grow in caves, travel through deep water, or wait quietly in places the daylight can’t reach. Darkness can be fertile. It can provide shelter, privacy, rest, mystery, beauty, resistance, and room for transformation.

This anthology asks what becomes possible when people and communities are freed from the demand to remain constantly visible. What grows beyond surveillance? What knowledge survives underground? What relationships become possible in the quiet hours? What cultures flourish outside institutions that would exploit, suppress, assimilate, or erase them? What might the night teach us about building futures rooted in care, interdependence, ecological belonging, and liberation?

We’re looking for stories that approach darkness in ways that shatter the stereotype of darkness as a source of fear or adversity. Darkness might contain danger, grief, uncertainty, or conflict, but it can also be a habitat, a refuge, a commons, a place of healing and comfort, or the beginning of something new and exciting.

What We’re Looking For

For this anthology, we welcome original, unpublished short fiction between 1,500 and 10,000 words.

Stories might explore:

night-blooming plants and nocturnal pollinators
fungi, roots, soil, caves, and underground ecosystems
deep oceans, polar nights, or other environments beyond sunlight
hidden, fugitive, or underground communities
queer, disabled, neurodivergent, migrant, Indigenous, diasporic, or otherwise marginalized people and communities creating their own spaces of belonging and building life beyond hostile institutions
mutual-aid networks operating outside official systems
resistance movements concealed from surveillance
private healing, rest, incubation, and slow transformation
secret knowledge, forbidden traditions, and suppressed histories
rituals, celebrations, relationships, and cultures shaped by the night
the right to privacy, opacity, illegibility, or remaining unknown
moonlit cities, subterranean settlements, fungal networks, dream communities, distant planets, or futures that move according to different clocks
forms of liberation that don’t depend upon recognition from dominant institutions

These are invitations rather than requirements or limitations. We’re excited to encounter interpretations we haven’t imagined.

What We Mean by Lunarpunk

Lunarpunk is a speculative genre and aesthetic concerned with nocturnal life, mystery, spirituality, intuition, ecological interdependence, transformative justice, alternative ways of knowing, and the forms of community that emerge beyond the bright surfaces of dominant society. It shares solarpunk’s interest in hopeful, sustainable, and liberatory futures while turning toward the night: toward dreams, shadows, cycles, ritual, hidden networks, difficult emotions, and the parts of individual and collective life that aren’t or can’t always be made visible.

Your story doesn’t need to use the word lunarpunk, feature the moon, or reproduce any particular visual aesthetic. For this anthology, we’re more interested in the values, questions, relationships, and possibilities of the genre than we are in the glowing aesthetics.

Hope is always welcome, but keep in mind that hope doesn’t require a perfect world or an uncomplicated ending. We’re interested in stories where people struggle, adapt, repair, organize, care for one another, and create meaningful possibilities within imperfect conditions.

Darkness Is Not the Villain

Western storytelling has often used darkness as shorthand for evil, ignorance, danger, corruption, or despair. This stereotype has a web of foundations that includes evolutionary history as well as the racist rhetoric of western imperialism and colonization. We encourage contributors to look beyond those familiar stereotypes and associations.

For this anthology, darkness can be a lot of different things, including but not limited to:

a living ecosystem
protection from surveillance
freedom from performance
a place to rest
a space for intimacy
a condition for dreaming
a refuge for forbidden knowledge
a setting for ceremony and celebration
a source of uncertainty that deserves respect rather than conquest
fertile ground for resistance, healing, and change

Stories can still contain frightening or harmful things that happen at night. But we hope contributors will remain attentive to the larger cultural meanings they attach to darkness, light, visibility, and the unknown. Even more, we’re especially interested in stories that question the assumption that liberation always means becoming visible. Who benefits when everything must be illuminated, documented, categorized, and understood? What freedoms might come from choosing when, how, and whether to be seen?

Stories We Hope to Avoid

We are unlikely to accept stories in which:

darkness functions as a symbol of evil, savagery, ignorance, or moral failure
light, technology, policing, or surveillance automatically solves social problems
marginalized cultures exist primarily as mystical guides for a more privileged protagonist
trauma is used primarily for shock or spectacle
oppression disappears through the actions of a single heroic individual
ecological restoration is separated from social justice and community self-determination
technology is treated as inherently liberatory without considering who controls it
hope and progress depend on returning to an imagined pure or primitive past

We’re looking for complex stories rather than ideological demonstrations. Characters can disagree, make mistakes, experience conflict, and live within communities that remain unfinished.

Who Can Submit + (No) AI Policy

Submissions are open to human authors worldwide. We warmly encourage submissions from writers whose voices have historically been marginalized within speculative publishing, including Black, Indigenous, and other writers of color; LGBTQIA+ writers; disabled and neurodivergent writers; working-class writers; immigrants and diasporic writers; and writers from communities disproportionately affected by colonialism, environmental injustice, and climate change.

We are seeking work created by human writers only. Please do not submit fictioncreated wholly or in part by generative artificial intelligence, LMM tools. The use of ordinary spelling, grammar, and accessibility software is permitted. Writers may be asked to describe their creative process if questions of authorship arise.

Content Notes

We encourage stories that engage with difficult subjects, but ask contributors to approach marginalized identities, cultural traditions, trauma, violence, and ecological harm with care. Please include brief content notes for material involving (but necessarily limited to) subjects like sexual violence, child abuse, suicide, self-harm, graphic violence, racism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, or animal harm. Content notes will not automatically disqualify a story. They help us read submissions responsibly and think about the experience of the anthology’s eventual audience.

We will not under any circumstances consider work that promotes racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, caste oppression, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, colonialism, fascism, or other forms of dehumanization.

Payment and Rights

Contributors will receive 8 cents per word and a free contributor’s copy upon publication. We request first world English rights, exclusive for one year in print and digital formats. Copyright will remain with the author. Full contract terms will be provided upon acceptance.

Editorial Process

All submissions will be read with care. We expect to send responses by approximately March 31, 2027.

We are committed to clear, respectful communication throughout the editorial process. Accepted stories may receive editorial feedback intended to strengthen the work while respecting the writer’s voice and intentions. Acceptance will be contingent upon the author and editor reaching agreement on any necessary revisions.

How to Submit

Submit your story through our Moksha Submission Portal between Nov 1-30, 2026.

Please direct any questions to the anthology's editor at jank@android-press.com. Please allow at least 24-48 hours for replies to questions.

In your cover letter:

briefly introduce yourself (75 words or less)
provide a short synopsis of your story (no more than one paragraph, i.e. 4-5 sentences max)
include any content notes on your story (see the Content Note section below for more info)

We look forward to reading the worlds, relationships, cultures,

and living systems you discover beyond the light.

Some things survive in darkness.

Some things rest there.

Some things gather strength.

And some things bloom.

About the Editor

Justine Norton-Kertson is the Editor-in-Chief of Android Press and Solarpunk Magazine. They were editor of Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology and The 2022 Best of Utopian Speculative Fiction Anthology. Their debut horror novella, Gutterspace, comes out on October 13, 2026 from Stars and Sabers Publishing.