Inkhorn Review Gold Star Program Gold Star

SUBMISSIONS

Previously, we weren't committed to a school, style, or kind of poem. You'll see that in our 2026 editions. But for issues beginning 2027, we're tired of playing tennis with the net down.

We prefer forms, but are not opposed to the occasional tightly written "modern" piece.

If you write micro fiction, please format it as such, not as "verse." We anticipate that statement to create some backlash. Bring it on.

We view poetic form not as a rigid prison, but as an essential boundary that gave art its tension, meaning, and joy. Robert Frost famously compared writing free verse to "playing tennis with the net down," arguing that without the resistance of strict meter and rhyme, the game of poetry lost its purpose and thrill. For Frost, the true triumph of a poet lay in the ability to marry the strict, mathematical constraints of iambic pentameter with the natural, chaotic cadences of everyday human speech—a concept he called "the sound of sense." By keeping the traditional structures intact, Frost believed he could anchor deep, modern anxieties inside a comforting, rhythmic order, proving that true creative freedom is found by working within limitations rather than abandoning them.

Up to six poems in a single document. Any length, any form.

Reading fees help us pay our contributors. If the reading fee presents a challenge for you, please watch for our quarterly free-submission calls.

Send one poetry submission at a time and wait for a response before sending another. You may have one open submission across all genres. If you anticipate becoming a regular submitter, our Patreon program offers perks that may interest you.

Yes. We assume you're submitting elsewhere.

If a poem is accepted here, simply withdraw it elsewhere. If you place one with another journal, withdraw it here and we'll keep reading the rest.

We don't accept previously published work.

A personal blog, newsletter, or public social media post counts as published. Workshop and private-group sharing does not.

We publish human writing.

Please don't send work generated by AI, in whole or in part. We're not talking about your spell-checker. The line we care about is the one drawn by the Authors Guild in its AI Best Practices for Authors: the words and the thinking should be yours.

Inkhorn Review pays $25 per accepted poem, micro, or flash fiction piece up to 1,000 words and $40 per accepted prose piece over 1,000 words or work of art. Payment is sent on publication day. Payment upon initial publication covers all uses.

Submissions are free. Tips are welcome and go toward the contributor fund, but they have no bearing on how work is read or selected.

We aim to respond within 30 days. If it's been more than 60 days, please query.

We acquire first serial rights, the right to keep the work in our online archive, the right to reprint it in our annual themed and awards editions and in anthologies drawn from our own archive, and the right to read it aloud on our podcast, Life on Words. For artwork, this also includes the non-exclusive right to use the image to promote the issue in which it appears. Payment upon initial publication covers all uses. We will not use your work to train AI models and will not license it to anyone who does. All other rights remain with you, and all rights revert to you on publication. Reprint your work wherever you like; we only ask that Inkhorn Review be credited as the first place it appeared.

Accepted work appears in the next available space and stays in our online archive.

Full rights language is available at inkhornreview.com/submissions.

Not Open

We're after prose that knows what it's doing — precision, a voice that sounds like a person rather than a genre, and endings that earn themselves. We're slower to take work that explains its own feeling or arrives already sure of what the reader should conclude.

One prose piece of any length, up to 5,000 words, or one to three flash fiction pieces up to 1,000 words each. Paid submissions are open year round, so shorter pieces are welcome too.

Send one prose submission at a time and wait for a response before sending another. You may have one open submission across all genres. If you anticipate becoming a regular submitter, our Patreon program offers perks that may interest you.

Reading fees help us pay our contributors. If the reading fee presents a challenge for you, please watch for our quarterly free-submission calls.

Yes. We assume you're submitting elsewhere. Withdraw here as soon as a piece is placed.

We don't accept it.

A personal blog, newsletter, or public social media post counts as published. Workshop and private-group sharing does not.

We publish human writing.

Please don't send work generated by AI, in whole or in part. We're not talking about your spell-checker. The line we care about is the one the Authors Guild draws in its AI Best Practices for Authors: the words and the thinking should be yours.

We aim to respond within 30 days. If it's been longer than 60 days, please query.

Inkhorn Review pays $25 per accepted short prose piece or $40 per accepted piece over 1,000 words, sent on publication day. Payment upon initial publication covers all uses.

Submissions are free. Tips are welcome and go toward the contributor fund, but they have no bearing on how work is read or selected.

We acquire first serial rights, the right to keep the work in our online archive, the right to reprint it in our annual themed and awards editions and in anthologies drawn from our own archive, and the right to read it aloud on our podcast, Life on Words. For artwork, this also includes the non-exclusive right to use the image to promote the issue in which it appears. Payment upon initial publication covers all uses. We will not use your work to train AI models and will not license it to anyone who does. All other rights remain with you, and all rights revert to you on publication. Reprint your work wherever you like; we only ask that Inkhorn Review be credited as the first place it appeared.

Full rights language is available at inkhornreview.com/submissions.

Not Open

SUBMISSIONS

We aren't committed to a school, style, or kind of poem.

The editor is a poet himself and deliberately tries to publish past the edge of his own taste. So if the work is good, strange, surprising, or simply not what a journal like this usually publishes, send it.

Up to three poems in a single document. Any length, any form.

Send one poetry submission at a time and wait for a response before sending another. You may have one open submission across all genres. If you anticipate becoming a regular submitter, our Patreon program offers perks that may interest you.

Yes. We assume you're submitting elsewhere.

If a poem is accepted here, simply withdraw it elsewhere. If you place one with another journal, withdraw it here and we'll keep reading the rest.

We don't accept previously published work.

A personal blog, newsletter, or public social media post counts as published. Workshop and private-group sharing does not.

We publish human writing.

Please don't send work generated by AI, in whole or in part. We're not talking about your spell-checker. The line we care about is the one drawn by the Authors Guild in its AI Best Practices for Authors: the words and the thinking should be yours.

Inkhorn Review pays $25 per accepted poem, micro, or flash fiction piece up to 1,000 words and $40 per accepted prose piece over 1,000 words or work of art. Payment is sent on publication day. Payment upon initial publication covers all uses.

Submissions are free. Tips are welcome and go toward the contributor fund, but they have no bearing on how work is read or selected.

We aim to respond within 30 days. If it's been more than 60 days, please query.

We acquire first serial rights, the right to keep the work in our online archive, the right to reprint it in our annual themed and awards editions and in anthologies drawn from our own archive, and the right to read it aloud on our podcast, Life on Words. For artwork, this also includes the non-exclusive right to use the image to promote the issue in which it appears. Payment upon initial publication covers all uses. We will not use your work to train AI models and will not license it to anyone who does. All other rights remain with you, and all rights revert to you on publication. Reprint your work wherever you like; we only ask that Inkhorn Review be credited as the first place it appeared.

Full rights language is available at inkhornreview.com/submissions.

Not Open

SUBMISSIONS

We aren't committed to a school, style, or kind of poem.

The editor is a poet himself and deliberately tries to publish past the edge of his own taste. So if the work is good, strange, surprising, or simply not what a journal like this usually publishes, send it.

Up to three poems in a single document. Any length, any form.

Send one poetry submission at a time and wait for a response before sending another. You may have one open submission across all genres. If you are or anticipate becoming a regular submitter, our patronage program offers perks that will benefit you.

Yes. We assume you're submitting elsewhere.

If a poem is accepted here, simply withdraw it elsewhere. If you place one with another journal, withdraw it here and we'll keep reading the rest.

We don't accept previously published work.

A personal blog, newsletter, or public social media post counts as published. Workshop and private-group sharing does not.

We publish human writing.

Please don't send work generated by AI, in whole or in part. We're not talking about your spell-checker. The line we care about is the one drawn by the Authors Guild in its AI Best Practices for Authors: the words and the thinking should be yours.

Inkhorn Review pays $25 per accepted poem, micro, or flash fiction piece up to 1,000 words and $40 per accepted prose piece over 1,000 words or work of art. Payment is sent on publication day. Payment upon initial publication covers all uses.

Submissions are free. Tips are welcome and go toward the contributor fund, but they have no bearing on how work is read or selected.

We aim to respond within 30 days. If it's been more than 60 days, please query.

We acquire first serial rights, the right to keep the work in our online archive, the right to reprint it in our annual themed and awards editions and in anthologies drawn from our own archive, and the right to read it aloud on our podcast, Life on Words. For artwork, this also includes the non-exclusive right to use the image to promote the issue in which it appears. Payment upon initial publication covers all uses. We will not use your work to train AI models and will not license it to anyone who does. All other rights remain with you, and all rights revert to you on publication. Reprint your work wherever you like; we only ask that Inkhorn Review be credited as the first place it appeared.

Full rights language is available at inkhornreview.com/submissions.

Not Open

We're after prose that knows what it's doing — precision, a voice that sounds like a person rather than a genre, and endings that earn themselves. We're slower to take work that explains its own feeling or arrives already sure of what the reader should conclude.

One piece up to 3,000 words. Paid submissions, open year round, take pieces of any length up to 5,000 words.

If you write very short, you may send up to three flash pieces (300 words each) in a single document.

Send one prose submission at a time and wait for a response before sending another. You may have one open submission across all genres. If you anticipate becoming a regular submitter, our Patreon program offers perks that may interest you.

Yes. We assume you're submitting elsewhere. Withdraw here as soon as a piece is placed.

We don't accept it.

A personal blog, newsletter, or public social media post counts as published. Workshop and private-group sharing does not.

We publish human writing.

Please don't send work generated by AI, in whole or in part. We're not talking about your spell-checker. The line we care about is the one the Authors Guild draws in its AI Best Practices for Authors: the words and the thinking should be yours.

We aim to respond within 30 days. If it's been longer than 60 days, please query.

Inkhorn Review pays $40 per accepted prose piece over 1,000 words or $25 per accepted prose piece under 1,000 words, sent on publication day. Payment upon initial publication covers all uses.

Submissions are free. Tips are welcome and go toward the contributor fund, but they have no bearing on how work is read or selected.

We acquire first serial rights, the right to keep the work in our online archive, the right to reprint it in our annual themed and awards editions and in anthologies drawn from our own archive, and the right to read it aloud on our podcast, Life on Words. For artwork, this also includes the non-exclusive right to use the image to promote the issue in which it appears. Payment upon initial publication covers all uses. We will not use your work to train AI models and will not license it to anyone who does. All other rights remain with you, and all rights revert to you on publication. Reprint your work wherever you like; we only ask that Inkhorn Review be credited as the first place it appeared.

Full rights language is available at inkhornreview.com/submissions.

Not Open