Temporary Hiatus and Submission Closure Notice

Dear Contributors and Readers,

I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to you today with a personal and significant update.

After much consideration, I have decided to put Pyre Magazine on a temporary hiatus, effective immediately. Consequently, we will be closing our doors to all submissions until Spring 2025. Though difficult, this decision was born out of a need to focus on my family and personal health, which require my full attention now.

Pyre Magazine has always been a labor of love, a platform where creativity and passion find a voice. With a heavy heart, I step back, but I do so with the belief that this pause is necessary for my well-being and, ultimately, for the future of our magazine.

During this period, we will not be publishing new content, and our editorial team will also take a break. No submissions sent in 2024 will be considered. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. 

I sincerely appreciate your understanding and support during this time. Your contributions and readership have been the lifeblood of Pyre Magazine, and I am endlessly grateful for the community we have built together.

I look forward to reuniting with all of you in Spring 2025, rejuvenated and ready to reignite our shared passion for outstanding literature and art.

Thank you for your continued support and understanding.

Best wishes,

Ryan Thomas LaBee

Editor-in-Chief

Pyre Magazine


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



Spring/Summer 2022


Short Story, Fiction, Dark Lit Ryan LaBee Short Story, Fiction, Dark Lit Ryan LaBee

WITH A GLEAM IN ITS EYE — Lark Morgan Lu

Harlow spotted its partner in its reflection of the bathroom mirror. Kir@Kira smiled with her diamond-pupil eyes as she stood behind Harlow. Kir@Kira was a VTuber whose name meant cutely glittering or twinkling in Japanese, a poreless avatar with a mane of rainbow hair and pastel outfits mapped onto the movements of some unknown figure behind a camera. Today her lipstick was a deep plum like a bruise upon the mouth.

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Short Story, horror Ryan LaBee Short Story, horror Ryan LaBee

Little Man — Matthew Mitchell

The little man was dead. Of that, both boys were certain. Some time passed before they came to this assumption, but the conclusion was unanimous. For one thing, the little man hadn't moved since they first came upon it in the forest. Not even after they crept up beside it and shouted. For another, blackish blood had pooled beneath the little man's body. Thin rivulets eked out across the stone on which it lay.

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Flash, Flash Fiction Ryan LaBee Flash, Flash Fiction Ryan LaBee

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.

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Non-Fiction Ryan LaBee Non-Fiction Ryan LaBee

Birds — Melissa Nunez

I used to be the kind of person who didn’t like to run very far or very fast but could when called upon, for emergency situations—if I were being chased. I liked knowing I could create decent distance between myself and my would-be assailant. But I am not that kind of person anymore. In pursuit of reattaining this reluctant racing form, and because the lure of local wild increases as I age, my husband and I have been using our limited time together without our children to walk and bike the trails of the nature center nearest our house.

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Creative Non-fiction, Non-Fiction Ryan LaBee Creative Non-fiction, Non-Fiction Ryan LaBee

Emails to The Otherside — Bethany Jarmul

While pushing my son in his blue toddler swing—the air heavy with humidity and pollen—I remembered the last time I saw you. You were sweaty, flushed, jogging at the park. Josh and I were newly engaged—me in my turquoise dress, him in his button-up shirt—taking smiling photos on a wooden bench. Your brown eyes were bright, hair buzzed short when you stopped to say, “hello,” asked if we still attended the young adult group at church where the three of us met. “No,” we said. “It’s mostly young college kids now. We don’t belong.” You nodded, understanding.

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Flash Fiction, Flash Ryan LaBee Flash Fiction, Flash Ryan LaBee

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.

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Flash, Flash Fiction, horror Ryan LaBee Flash, Flash Fiction, horror Ryan LaBee

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.

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Flash, Flash Fiction, horror Ryan LaBee Flash, Flash Fiction, horror Ryan LaBee

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.

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Folk, Dark Lit, Fiction, Short Story Ryan LaBee Folk, Dark Lit, Fiction, Short Story Ryan LaBee

Two Blue Circles —John K. Peck

Mother has been sewing near-constantly for weeks, digging out our old shirts and smocks and going at them with her needle. Once they’re in shape she pulls them over our heads, and their cool linen smells like mildew and winter. When we complain she tells us to go outside and run around in them, and soon enough she's right, the sweat and sunlight chase the smell away. Later, when it's time to come back, they ring the bells in our village and all the villages up and down the valley. Without that we'd play half the night, never know when it was time for dinner, the sun still lighting up the treetops on the hills across the valley long past our bedtimes.

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Flash Fiction, Flash, Dark Lit, literature Ryan LaBee Flash Fiction, Flash, Dark Lit, literature Ryan LaBee

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.

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