Whew, another busy week, and it’s only hump day! My day work in secondary education has been full-throttle, meaning that even on my lunch breaks, when I normally would schedule writing time, I haven’t managed to do anything literary at all. I’m sure things will settle down soon; there are always unexpected hiccups in school life at the start of term that get ironed out as the pupils get into the swing of term. For now though, this has meant I’ve had to squeeze in writing time and editing Bindweed Anthologies after school while my son is at after-school club.

Busy, to say the least!

A backlog of Bindweed submissions

This week I have been prioritising Bindweed over my own writing, for the simple reason that our (my hubby Joseph Robert and I co-manage Bindweed) publication remains very popular indeed and we have a backlog of submissions that we need to read through. Submissions close on 1st October to give me time to typeset the paperback and format the eBook. For any readers out there who weren’t aware that we run a literary anthology, Bindweed has been in publication since 2016, starting life as a quarterly print magazine until 2018. It then switched to an online ezine for three years from 2019, before becoming a biannual anthology since 2022. Our latest Yuletide ghost story collection is the second biannual anthology of 2025, and marks our first themed anthology. Exciting stuff.

Why should writers submit to Bindweed?

Did you know that back issues of Bindweed are catalogued at the National Library of Ireland? That means, any writers we publish can proudly say that their work is stocked in a very prestigious library. We’re also listed on Duotrope, which is why, I’m guessing, we receive so many submissions. The exposure from Duotrope has led to us publishing thousands of writers and poets over the past nine years, from all over the world.

Hoping to pay our Bindweed contributors

Okay, breather. I’m going to stop with the hard sell now. My last promotional point is just to say that, although we have been running Bindweed as a not-for-profit, labour-of-love, book-baby project, simply because we’re idealistic folks who want to support fellow authors, we hope that we will soon be in a position to pay our writers a token amount of royalties in the near future, if sales of back issues will continue to increase. So, if you’re a fiction writer looking for a home for your spooky seasonal story, feel free to send it our way before the submission reading period ends on 1st October.

Posted by on September 10, 2025 in magazines, Publishing, submission calls and tagged , , , , .

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About Leilanie Stewart

Leilanie Stewart is an award-winning author and poet from Belfast, Northern Ireland. She writes ghost and psychological horror, as well as experimental poetry. Her writing confronts the nature of self; her novels feature main characters on a dark psychological journey who have a crisis and create a new sense of identity. She began writing for publication while working as an English teacher in Japan, a career pathway that has influenced themes in her writing. Her former career as an Archaeologist has also inspired her writing and she has incorporated elements of archaeology and mythology into both her fiction and poetry. In addition to promoting her own work, Leilanie runs Bindweed Anthologies, a creative writing publication with her writer husband, Joseph Robert. Aside from publishing pursuits, Leilanie enjoys spending time with her husband and their lively literary lad, a voracious reader of sea monster books.

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