Call for Submissions on Theme of "Collaborations": The Illanot Review

 

February 1 to March 31, 2026
Theme: Collaborations
Guest Editors:
Poetry: Octavio Quintanilla & Todd Fredson
Fiction: Jeff Friedman
Creative Nonfiction: Sherre Vernon 

This reading period we are looking for collaborations, broadly interpreted. Send us your co-authored poems, stories, essays, or graphic texts. We consider a “collaboration” to be any way an individual poet, writer, artist interacts with another’s work: translations, versions, trans-e-lations, ekphrastic writing, erasure, centos, etc. We also want your work about collaborators of all kinds—informers, spies, business partners, community theater companies. We welcome a statement about your collaboration, along with your submission.

Submission Guidelines: 

• Only one submission per reading period, please! Multiple submissions (including submissions to multiple genres) will be automatically disqualified. Submission fees: Submissions are free for two weeks or until Submittable’s submission caps are reached, whichever comes first.

• After that, we charge a submission fee of $3.

• Translations are free throughout the submission period.

• The Ilanot Review is a volunteer operation. Funds go towards web hosting fees and Submittable service fees.

• We will consider simultaneous submissions but ask that you retract your work immediately if it is accepted for publication elsewhere.

• If your work appears in our current or previous issue, we kindly ask that you refrain from submitting to our upcoming issue.

• Please include a short bio (50-100 words) with your submission.

• We welcome unpublished translations of original work, provided the translator has obtained permission from the author. Please include a copy of the original work with your submission.

• We welcome work that challenges conventions of form, style, and content.

• We retain first serial rights to work published in The Ilanot Review. At the time of publication, all rights revert back to the author. However, The Ilanot Review retains the right to publish the piece(s) in any subsequent issue or anthology, whether in print or online. Should you decide to republish the piece elsewhere, we kindly ask that you cite The Ilanot Review as a place of previous publication.

AI policy: Inefficiency is part of the artistic process, and we have not seen any instance in which AI-produced or assisted work is worth wasting our planet over. Therefore, we publish human-generated work only (without the assistance of AI or LLM tools).

Categories: 

Poetry: Submit 3-5 poems, not to exceed 8 pages. Please submit all work + bio in a single Word file, with each poem beginning on a separate page.

Fiction: One story up to 3,000 words long or 1-3 works of flash/microfiction, up to 500 words each.

Creative Nonfiction: One essay up to 4,000 words long or 1-3 works of flash/micro-CNF, up to 500 words each.

Art, Photography, Comics: Please submit a single document or up to 6 image files (all files must be included in a single submission). Stand-alone images submitted to this category will be considered for inclusion within the journal’s pages and as cover art.

Translations: We welcome unpublished translations into English from any language, provided the translator has obtained permission from the author. See above for word limits for each genre. Please include a copy of the original work with your submission. 

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions on Theme of "The Aftermath": Barrel House Online

 

The Aftermath

Stories often focus on the climactic events in one’s life, but after these points of intensity, the world goes on. What happens when the adventure is over? How do you live your daily life after being abducted by aliens? What do you fill your days with after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize? What happens in the sequel to a story that doesn’t need one? This spring, Barrelhouse is calling for short stories, poetry, creative nonfiction, and art that measure moments in and after abnormal times. The ways we can feel elated, apathetic, tortured, or fixated on the events that shape us. What does it look like once the afterglow has faded?

The Details

Fiction and Creative Nonfiction: up to 5,000 words

Poetry: 3-5 poems

Art: Make sure files are in a format and resolution appropriate for web posting

Simultaneous Submissions: Are welcomed! Just make sure to withdraw a piece immediately if it's accepted elsewhere.

Multiple Submissions: Please only submit once for this call

Payment: $50

Deadline: Submissions will stay open until March 16, or when we reach our submission cap for this call (500), whichever happens first. Likely we'll hit that cap, so don't wait too long to submit. 

Submission link here. 

Call for Submissions: New Delta Review

 

New Delta Review publishes a wide range of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, book reviews, interviews, and artwork. Please read the editor statements below for a sense of our aesthetics, our mission statement, and, of course, check out our back issues, available online. All submissions must be sent using Submittable.

Fiction
We publish fiction of wildly different styles and modes. While we tend to gravitate toward the weirder side of things, our aesthetic is always in flux and this dynamism is exciting to us. We enjoy stories with or without plots, but, either way, we’re looking for complete fictions, ones with an arc, an atmosphere, a heart, preferably with blood. Novel excerpts are fine as long as they’re self-contained: if it needs a summary to make sense, it’s not for us. Please check out what we’ve published in the past; current and back issues are available for free, right here, on the internet.

While we do occasionally publish longer pieces, we prefer our stories to come in at around 3,000 words. We also have a special interest in flash fiction, and brief series of flash pieces.

Poetry
We would like you to challenge traditional notions of lyricism, or avoid the lyric altogether. Stricter forms are fine, but we tend to prefer them corrupted. Embrace the the bizarre, the political, the radical, but do so with purpose. Five poems maximum, please and thank you.

Nonfiction
We welcome essays with compelling emotional resonance and distinctive, effective command of voice. Experiments in form and structure that feel urgent, necessary and inextricable to the content make our brains tingle, and we get excited over excellently executed traditional narrative. Bring us your lyricism, your breaks in form, your reclaiming histories, your deepest inquiries — all topics fair game.

Write from personal experience or not, but please note we do not accept essays that amount to voyeurism of/parachuting into marginalized cultures by authors from Western backgrounds, or essays rooted in the dehumanization of marginalized peoples. We do accept essays that engage with current events, so long as they are relatively evergreen, given that our publication process lasts roughly three months.

For longform submissions, we prefer essays around 3,000 words or less, though we may occasionally publish a longer piece. For flash submissions, send up to three essays of no more than 1,000 words each.

Hybrid
NDR’s hybrid category is intended for works that use language, in its broadest terms, to push the boundaries of writing and genre. Possible forms could include: collages, interactive writing, micro-fiction and nonfiction, sound-texts, video-texts, visual and/or concrete poems, or anything else that challenges the boundaries of medium and genre or might not otherwise be able to be published in a print magazine.

Art
We consider artwork in all media—from traditional (painting, drawing, photography, installation/sculpture) to new media (video, animation, and hypertext). Please consider our online format, and the possibilities of art on the web, when submitting your work. We want art that works with or around the limits that our online platform offers. Please see our past photography contest winners and the cover art featured in our back issues for a sense of our evolving aesthetic. We strive to push against traditional concepts and forms; send us your wildest and most challenging pieces.

Interviews & Reviews
NDR seeks the most creative interviews and reviews—we want to hear about books and authors that range from the mainstream or the very-well-known to the not-so-well-known and deeply underground. We want to know what’s hot to you. Please see our back issues to get a sense of our length requirements and standard practices—but don’t be afraid to surprise us with something that’s entirely different.

While we do occasionally publish longer pieces, we prefer our stories to come in at around 3,000 words. We also have a special interest in flash fiction, and brief series of flash pieces.

Submit your work here.

Deadline: April 30, 2026 

One published piece a year in each category receives $250. 

Call for Submissions: Cahava International Literary Journal

Cahava (meaning “proverb” in Urdu/Hindi) is an international literary journal dedicated to championing remarkable voices in the literary world. We strive to introduce up-and-coming writers to a wider audience.

Cahava publishes pieces that explore the human condition - short stories that make you laugh to poems that may make you cry. Most importantly, we look for work that offers a new perspective on the world around us; or perhaps just help understand ourselves a little better.

Cahava is an international online literary journal, published quarterly. Each issue features a thoughtfully curated selection of poetry and fiction.

We welcome submissions of short stories, flash fiction, poetry, and prose poetry. All work must be original, unpublished, and written in English. Translations are also welcome, provided that appropriate permissions have been secured.

We accept submissions year-round and do not charge a submission fee.

Submission - Spring 2026

Deadline: Apr 15, 2026

Prose
Submissions up to 3,000 words, including:

Short stories

Novel excerpts

Creative nonfiction

Personal essays (literary or general interest)

Play scripts

Postcard stories

Compensation: $0.05 per word

Poetry
Submit up to original poems of any style. Individual poems must not exceed three pages in length.

Compensation: Higher of $10 or $0.05 per word

Additional Notes

Simultaneous submissions are accepted; however, notify us immediately if your piece is accepted elsewhere.

Previously published work (in print, online, or digital) will not be considered.

Response time: up to 6 weeks.

All rights revert to the author after publication.

Submit your work here.

Call for Submissions on Theme of: "The Ground Beneath Us: Place, Power, and Resistance": About Place Journal

The Ground Beneath Us: Place, Power, and Resistance

“We stand on ancestral land. We walk through stolen cities. We return to sacred places. We resist with our bodies, with our breath, with our stories.”

In this current political moment marked by state repression, attacks on bodily autonomy, climate collapse, and rising authoritarianism, we are reminded that place is never neutral. It is shaped by power, haunted by memory, and pulsing with resistance.

This remarkable issue invites work that explores place as a site of struggle and survival. We seek writing and art that engage with land, home, borders, environment, and community, not as static backdrops, but as living terrains that hold grief, memory, and the seeds of transformation.

We welcome poetry, essays, fiction, hybrid work, visual art, and multimedia submissions from those rooted in activism, spirit, and justice. Emerging and established artists are encouraged to submit. In addition, we especially encourage submissions from BIPOC, Pasifika, LGBTQIA2S+, disabled, immigrant, and frontline communities whose connections to place are marked by struggle, resilience, and reclamation.

Here are some questions we want to delve deeper into that we invite you to meditate on. How do we resist displacement, erasure, or environmental destruction through our connection to place? What are the geographies of protest, healing, and communal care in your work? How do we carry the memory of land we no longer live on or are barred from returning to? What does it mean to reimagine maps, neighborhoods, and sacred ground in this political climate? How do we fight for place while honoring those who fought before us?

Possible themes include: 

• Land justice and Indigenous sovereignty

• Environmental racism and ecological grief

• Gentrification, housing, and community defense

1. Queer and trans geographies

• Diaspora, exile, and return

• Spiritual and ancestral ties to place

• Borders, surveillance, and belonging

We look forward to seeing your work!

Work must be submitted via Submittable by March 10, 2026.

Writing Competition: The Lascaux Prize in Poetry

The Lascaux Prize in Poetry

Poems may be previously published or unpublished, and simultaneous submissions are accepted. Winner receives $1,000, a bronze medallion, and publication in The Lascaux Review. All entries are considered for publication.

Entry fee is $15.

Poets may enter more than once, and as many as five poems may be submitted per entry (all pasted into one document). There are no length restrictions. All genres and styles are welcome. Judges are the journal’s editors. Poets retain all rights to their work at all times. Because editors are dispersed geographically the review is unable to accept submissions via postal mail.

Please submit your work by 31 March 2026.

Submit your entry here.

Writing Competitions: 2026 CRAFT Awards for Excellence

2026 CRAFT Award for Excellence

February 9, 2026 – April 12, 2026
$5,000 Awarded

CRAFT’s mission since day one has been to explore how writing works and to celebrate the art of prose. With that goal in mind, we are introducing the CRAFT Award for Excellence, honoring the very best in each of our creative prose genres: Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Flash Fiction, and Flash Creative Nonfiction.

Each genre will award one winner the CRAFT Award for Excellence, selected by CRAFT’s editors; these winners will receive a $1,000 prize, online publication, reMarkable Paper Pro tablet & set up, and a CRAFT plaque commemorating your win. Two editors’ choice selections from any genre will receive $500 and online publication.

Show off your setting skills, dazzle us with snappy dialogue, render us spellbound with your lyricism. Whatever your craft, our only requirement is excellence.

GUIDELINES:

• The 2026 CRAFT Award for Excellence opens on February 9 and closes on April 12.

• CRAFT submissions are open to all writers, emerging and experienced.

• Submit up to 5,000 words of Short Fiction or Creative Nonfiction, or up to 1,000 words per piece of Flash Fiction or Flash Creative Nonfiction. Please, no excerpts.

• Submissions containing flash only may include up to two pieces per submission. Include both pieces in one document.

• This contest requires a $20 entry fee per submission.

• Writers from historically marginalized groups will be able to submit for free until we reach fifty free submissions. NOTE: The submission cap has been met.

• We allow multiple and simultaneous submissions. Each submission must be accompanied by a separate reading fee. Writers, please notify us and withdraw your submission if your piece is accepted for publication elsewhere.

• Submit previously unpublished work only—we do NOT review reprints (including work posted on blogs, personal websites, social media, et cetera). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.

• International submissions are allowed. Work must be written primarily in English, but some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.

• No translations, please.

• We review literary prose but are open to a variety of genres and styles—our only requirement is that you show excellence in your craft.

• Please double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12.

• Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history and any content warnings (if applicable).

• We do not require anonymous submissions.

• The winner will be asked to contribute an author’s note, or mini craft essay, that discusses their artistic choices in their piece. The note will be published with the winning work.

• All entries will also be considered for publication in CRAFT.

• Please review our values before submitting.

• AI-generated or -assisted submissions will be automatically disqualified.

• Unless you’ve already secured the necessary permissions, please do not include quoted song lyrics in your submitted work.

We are always happy to answer any questions. Email us:

contact@craftliterary.com

AWARDS:

• One winner in each genre will receive a $1,000 prize, reMarkable Paper Pro tablet & set up, and a CRAFT plaque commemorating your win.

• Two total editors’ choice selections will receive a $500 prize.

• The all six finalists will be published in CRAFT.

• Each publication will also include an author’s note (craft essay) by the writer.

More information and submission link here.