We Are Helia Lit
We publish pieces that take risks and trust their own vision. We're drawn to stories that feel relevant, honest, and unforgettable. Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction, Artwork, Photography. It’s all welcome here. Your work has a home with us. Submit with Helia Lit today.
Accepting Submissions For:
Fiction
Poetry
Nonfiction
Artwork
Photography
Accepting Submissions For: Fiction Poetry Nonfiction Artwork Photography
We Publish Every Submission That Meets Our Guidelines
(read that again)
If your work is original, if it hasn’t been previously published, if you wrote or created it yourself, if it follows our submission guidelines, we publish it.
Most literary magazines accepting submissions treat publication like a competition. The barrier to entry is high. The odds are stacked against you. Your work has to be the "right fit" for their aesthetic, their theme, their vision.
We're not doing that.
Helia Lit exists because we got tired of the gatekeeping. We're two writers with MFAs and over two decades combined experience in journalism and marketing. We've been published. We've been rejected. We've watched good work get turned down for reasons that had nothing to do with quality.
So we built something different. A digital literary magazine where your work doesn't have to fight for a spot. No submission fees. No limit on how often you can submit. No waiting months to hear back.
Our Submission Process
01
Fill out the submission form and upload your work through the portal. Double-check that everything is included so we can move it smoothly into the queue.
Submit Your Work
02
We read every submission to make sure it follows our published guidelines. This step is only about alignment with those guidelines, not subjective taste or “fit.”
Submission Review
03
Submissions meeting our guidelines will be added to our publication lineup. These will go live as part of our March 13 launch. All future submissions will go live on Fridays.
Getting Published
04
If a submission doesn’t meet our guidelines, we’ll be in touch within seven business days with more details. We will let you know the reason for not publishing your work.
Following Up
We’re Launching March 13, 2026
...which is on Friday the 13th
Submissions are open right now for all categories: short fiction, poetry submissions, creative nonfiction, artwork, and photography. We accept work year-round. No reading periods. No closed submission windows.
And because we're launching on Friday the 13th, we've got a special callout for Friday the 13th stories.
Bad luck that turned good. Superstitions you can't shake. The number 13 showing up in weird ways. Moments that felt cursed. Whatever you've got that connects to Friday the 13th, whether it's fiction, poetry, nonfiction, art, or photography, we want it.
These submissions get featured when we go live. If you've been sitting on something that fits, now's the time.
Your Work Deserves To Exist In This World
Good art (in any form) is clever. Great art tells the truth.
You've been working on something. Maybe it's a short story that doesn't fit neatly into categories because it's just a story you needed to tell. Maybe it's an essay that's part memoir, part cultural criticism, part something you don't have a name for yet. Maybe it's poetry that breaks every rule you learned in workshop, or photographs that don't look like anything else in your portfolio, or artwork that's been sitting in your studio because you're not sure where it belongs.
It belongs here.
We're writers for writers. Artists for artists. We built Helia Lit because we wanted a space where work doesn't have to be marketable to matter, where you don't have to fit a specific aesthetic or follow a trend or check boxes to get published. If you blend genres, bend rules, or keep to tradition, your work has a home here.
The only thing that matters is that it's yours, it’s ready for publication, and you're ready to share it.
Someone out there needs to read exactly what you wrote, or see exactly what you created.
You Have Something To Say.
Let Us Share It With The World.
Share the work you’ve been living with: the piece that surprises you, the one you’re obsessed with, or the one that doesn’t fit anywhere else. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, photography, or art — we want it all. Whatever your voice, whatever your vision, this is a place for it to be seen.
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