Escape Artists Foundation (or ‘EA’) is a media production company and registered US 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We publish four free weekly audio fiction podcasts, a bonus monthly podcast, work with partners such as Titan Books to publish print and digital anthologies, and create video content on platforms like Twitch.

We were Escape Artists Inc. from 2006 to 2022, and in 2023 we became a public charity.
From 2015 to 2017, we published the six issue digital magazine Mothership Zeta.

That’s the Hugo-nominated Escape Pod; we publish them.

Nope! They’re also called Escape Artists, though. And they produced one of our favorite movies. You can find them here.

From an editorial perspective, yes. Each show has their own staff and controls their own submission windows and story decisions.

As their publisher, EA manages areas where efficiency between shows makes a difference — things like accounting, our contracting team, and our community moderators.

Not true! When Escape Pod was launched in 2005 its goal was to create a reprint market for short science fiction. In those days if you didn’t subscribe to a print magazine, chances were you’d never get another chance to read the stories it contained. PseudoPod and PodCastle followed Escape Pod’s lead, and for many years our markets focused on reprints as a way of introducing their growing audiences to great fiction and the developing podcast distribution method.

But EA publishes both reprints and original fiction. Each show takes their own approach in terms of balancing the two, driven primarily by their budgets. More supports means larger editorial budgets means more original fiction.

All four EA podcasts are SFWA qualified short fiction markets, and pay $0.08/word for original fiction of any length, inline with the SFWA rate increase that took place in September 2019. CatsCast will be applying for qualified market status once it reaches a full year of publication in April 2023.

There are many other genre short fiction markets that pay lower rates, fixed rates, token payments, or not at all. We consider ourselves middle of the pack, and the rights we request in our contracts reflect this. We request only what we use, ask for industry-standard exclusivity periods, and give up front carve-outs for annual ‘best of’ and award anthologies. This is in line with best practice for the genre short fiction industry.

Definitely not true! Ratified in 2015 and passed in 2016, the ‘A Story by Any Other Name’ amendment to the World Science Fiction Society’s bylaws makes it clear that a work is eligible in the category appropriate to its length, regardless of publication format (including digital publication and audio):

Section 3.2.6: the categories of Best Novel, Novella, Novelette, and Short Story shall be open to works in which the text is the primary form of communication, regardless of the publication medium, including but not limited to physical print, audiobook, and ebook.

For example:

• Escape Pod was the very first Hugo-nominated semiprozine podcast in 2018
• PodCastle is the first podcast nominated for the World Fantasy Special Award – Non-Professional category

Plus, podcast stories have featured in multiple ‘best of’ anthologies and other prestigious awards. Nino Cipri’s “Opals and Clay” (originally published as PodCastle episode 402) was a 2016 Finalist in the James Tiptree Jr. award, and L’Erin Ogle’s “The Coven of Dead Girls” (originally published as PseudoPod episode 651) was selected for The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror in 2019.

True – in 2023 that number topped 3000! But every episode is someone’s first, just like every issue of a magazine you pick up might be your first introduction to that market.

Each of our shows publish a new listener’s guide if you want to start with the editors’ favorites, and each has extensive submissions guidelines to help you understand what kind of stories they want to publish. Check our Markets page for links.

Try loading up the latest (free!) episode or and starting there, or ask one of our social media accounts for a recommendation

Publishing short fiction is a precarious business model. We wanted to do something that would give EA its best chance of long term success without compromising our values. We talked to peers, got advise from professionals, and sought feedback from our supporters, all of which encouraged us to take this step. We’re grateful for their guidance and support.

Check out our January 2023 metacast for more of the background around this change.

Our EIN is 88-1480693.

Our registered and mailing address is:

Escape Artists Foundation Inc.
PO Box 83
Woodstock, Georgia  30188
United States of America

If you need to provide contact details, please use:

Marguerite Kenner
marguerite@escapeartists.net

Donations to the Escape Artists Foundation are tax-deductible in the United States to the extent of the law. But we’re not financial advisors, and you’ll need to talk to your tax professional about your personal circumstances and the tax treatment of your donations.

If your donations to Escape Artists Foundation in a calendar year totals US$250 or more, we will send you a donation acknowledgement in January for the prior year’s donations.

The platform you donate through (PayPal, Patreon, etc.) may also provide annual acknoqledgements.

For questions, please contact us directly.  And thank you!

The frustrating answer is — it depends.

Generally speaking, cross-border donations are not tax effective. A donation is considered “cross-border” if the location you donate from is outside the United States, where EA has its nonprofit status.

Some countries, like Canada, allow for donations made to US nonprofits and charities to offset US-derived income. Other places, like the UK, only allow special tax treatment for donations to charities registered in that country.

We’re not tax professionals and we can’t advise you — there are a lot of different factors. But hey, if YOU’RE a tax professional and want to share some of your expertise with our audience, get in touch and we’ll update this section!

Most likely, yes!

We’re currently registered with Benevity, a widely used corporate donation platform. You can find EA’s Benevity profile here.

If your employer uses a different platform, let us know and we’ll help you investigate.

And thank you! Corporate matching can DOUBLE the impact of your donation, at no cost to yourself!

Yes! Search your platform of choice for ‘Escape Artists Foundation’.

We are registered on:

• Benevity – https://causes.benevity.org/causes/840-881480693
• Charles Schwab
• Fidelity
• GuideStar – https://www.guidestar.org/profile/88-1480693
• PayPal Giving Fund – https://www.paypal.com/US/fundraiser/charity/4785611
• Vanguard 

If you use a charitable partner or platform not listed here, let us know and we’ll investigate registration. And thank you!

We’ve been donation supported by our audience since 2005, and became a US-registered nonprofit in 2023.

You can support EA through PayPal, Patreon, Ko-fi, and Twitch, or through corporate donation platforms like Benevity.

Mothership Zeta‘s issues are available for sale – check them out on Amazon or directly from EA via PayHip.

We also have a fantastic online store for all your merch needs.

Yeah! Absolutely it is!

We’re a donation-funded company that produces free audio fiction for a global audience, and publishes boundary-challenging genre fiction in a period of political and cultural turmoil. You bet it’s precarious.

The short version is either: each method has about the same cost to us. We want you to pick the method that works best for you.

In our experience, the primary difference is the way we’ll communicate with you:

• If you prefer an interactive donor experience, and want to receive regular news and bonus content, head to Patreon.
• If you’d rather set up a monthly or annual subscription that will take care of itself, PayPal is your best bet. Pick one of the drop-down options to the right. If none of them are quite right for you, choose the ‘Donate via Credit/Debit’ to go to PayPal and enter your own (just be sure to tick the ‘Make this a monthly donation’ box). Need help, just drop us a line.
• If a one-off donation is what you’re after, hit the ‘Donate via Credit/Debit’ button or check out Ko-fi.

Thank you for your support!

Special thanks to donor Paul Cahill-Britton for this addition!

Patreon does collect VAT on donations made by Patrons subject to the scheme. Patreon collects this tax on top of the stated donation amount, and reports it on our behalf.

So for example, if you’re a UK supporter at the $10/month level, Patreon would charge you 20% VAT as well, and collect $12. We receive $10, before Patreon takes its percentage.

This article gives more detail if you’re interested.

We never suspended subscriptions! According to our research, ‘suspended’ is what PayPal calls it when it has difficulty processing a payment. Lots of things can cause this, like an expired debit or credit card, or an insufficient PayPal balance. And PayPal may not have even notified you there was an issue.

We can’t correct the issue on our end — ‘suspended’ effectively means ‘cancelled’, as there’s currently no way for you to re-activate a suspended subscription. You’ll need to set up a new PayPal subscription, or consider supporting us through a different method, like Patreon or Ko-fi, where we have an easier time notifying you should something go wrong.

We’d LOVE to hear from PayPal on this issue; our queries have gone unanswered for years. If you know more please let us know!

We will happily receive physical checks or bank transfers if that’s easier for you. Checks can be mailed to the following address:

Escape Artists Foundation
Post Office Box 83
Woodstock, Georgia 30188
USA

For US and international bank transfers, or if you have another method you prefer, please drop us a line so we can provide the needed details.

And thank you!

Thank you so much for asking! There are lots of other ways you can support us:

• If you have an Amazon Prime account, you can support us for no cost through Twitch; we’ve prepared a full walk-through.
• Leave us a review and rate us wherever you download or stream your podcasts.
• Review our books — For Mortal Things Unsung, the PseudoPod 10th anniversary anthology, and The Escape Pod 15th anniversary anthology — on Amazon, Goodreads or Smashwords.
• Review the short fiction we publish! If you’re a reviewer, you can sign-up to receive our quarterly ebooks.
• Share our episodes with your friends and family and on social media. All of our shows are shared on social media — signal boosts are always appreciated, both by us and the fantastic creators involved!
• Do you organize a convention or fiction event, have a book coming out, or a product that might interest our listeners? Consider advertising with us, or invite our crew to be your guest.
• Consider our shows and the stories they publish for awards, and include them in award eligibility and consideration resources. This benefits our authors as well – everyone wins!
• Want to volunteer, or have a skill set you think would help? Let us know!

Each of our shows has a full Press Kit with images and trailers you can use. Check our Markets page for direct links, or that network menu across the top of our website. Print-quality artwork is available upon request.

EA holds general auditions for narrators twice a year, usually in April and October; check our Narrator Guidelines page or our Moksha portal for more information.

In addition, each of our shows will advertise if they’re seeking particular voices for a story on their social media accounts, so following those is the quickest way to learn about specific narrator needs.

Each EA podcast has editorial autonomy, and independently recruit for their associate reader teams. Your best bet is to follow the social media accounts for the show you’re interested in joining to keep an eye out for audition periods, or contacting their editorial team directly.

Thank you so much! Let us know what you have in mind.

Alasdair Stuart (he/him) is the co-publisher of EA, along with Marguerite Kenner. He’s a a professional enthusiast, pop culture analyst, award-winning voice actor, and writer behind the award-nominated weekly newsletter The Full Lid.

For more information visit his website.

Please don’t do that.

Alasdair is EA’s co-publisher, but he’s not an editor of any of EA’s imprints. His job involves helping the shows do awesome things, steering EA towards the future, being involved with the genre fiction community, and hosting both PseudoPod and at Escape Pod. He’s a frequent guest on other podcasts, appears regularly at conventions, an award-winning voice actor, and works with many different genre award organizations and associations.

In other words, his roles don’t involve selecting individual stories. Sending him your story won’t have any impact on whether or not it gets published.

Marguerite Kenner (she/her) is the co-publisher of EA, along with Alasdair Stuart. She was the editor of Cast of Wonders from 2013 – 2019, and is the President of EA’s board of directors as well as its CEO (she wears a lot of hats).

For more information please see her Carrd.

Just click on the magnifying glass icon, underneath the social media buttons, in the top right corner of each site:

All the episodes in our back catalog are available to stream or download from our website, and always will be.

Podcatchers (like Apple Podcasts) only go backwards so far, due to their own space limitations — usually around 300 episodes!

If you use something like podget or mashpodder that is based on wget, this might solve the problem:

Modify the –user-agent parameter for wget to be blank or a specific agent. For example: –user-agent=”” or –user-agent=”Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/38.0.2125.111 Safari/537.36″

Huge thanks to the EA forum community for providing this solution.

If you use something like podget or mashpodder that is based on wget, this might solve the problem:

Modify the –user-agent parameter for wget to be blank or a specific agent. For example: –user-agent=”” or –user-agent=”Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/38.0.2125.111 Safari/537.36″

Huge thanks to the EA forum community for providing this solution.

Currently, there’s no easy way to download past episodes in bulk. We don’t maintain an authorized Torrent, but the podcast feeds contain the most recent 300 episodes.

EA marks several impressive achievements reached by its staff, authors and narrators. They are:

• Escapologist – an author whose first SFWA-qualifying genre fiction sale was with an EA market
• Prestidigitator – a Flash Fiction Contest winner
• Worldwalker – an author published on all four podcasts (formerly called a Hat Trick)
• Storyteller – someone who has narrated for all four podcasts
• Cicerone – someone who has hosted episodes on all four podcasts

And finally, the Virtuoso (formerly the Grand Slam) – this polymath has been published by, narrated for, and hosted episodes at each and every EA podcast.