TrashLight Press Gold Star Program Gold Star

TrashLight Press is a lit mag for the feral, the rejected, the too-much-to-handle. We’re a home for weirdos and wordsmiths, the ones who never want to stay within the lines. The pieces we publish don’t play it safe – the scream, crawl, glow, and bleed.

We aren’t here to be quiet. We aren’t here to be clean cut. We aren’t interested in impressing the workshop and appeasing the algorithm.

We are here to scream, scribble, tear, and build altars out of ash. We believe in stories with teeth. Poetry that doesn’t ask forgiveness. Art that oozes sweat and dream smoke.

We are for the ones who’ve been rejected for being too weird, too raw, too political, too real. We are for the people who only feel alive when they’re creating something messy and holy.

TrashLight isn’t interested in your pedigree and credentials. Instead, we want your nightmare, your roadside revelations, your half-feral truths, your phantom limbs.

Bring us –

Stories that burn like a busted neon sign.
Poems that sound like breaking glass
Art that shouldn’t be hanging anywhere
The right to make beautiful things from garbage
The right to be loud, unedited, and unforgettable.

TrashLight is the flicker in the alley, the glow from the ruins.

We are the lit mag for the unlit and we will never apologize for burning bright.

Website Submissions Free Tip Jar Option Open

Closes on Wednesday, September 30, 2026 11:59 PM EDT (in 25 days).

TrashLight Press is open for rolling submissions. We publish raw, feral, genre-bending work twice a week on our website. We also release seasonal issues with themed calls for submissions (keep reading to see what’s on the horizon).

We’re looking for

Fiction - 3,000 word max
Nonfiction - 3,000 word max
Poetry - 3 pieces per submission
Art - 3 pieces or 1 collection of up to 10 smaller pieces
Hybrid & Uncategorized chaos

We accept simultaneous submissions. We don’t charge fees. We don’t publish AI generated work. We are willing previously published work if proper credit is provided. And we don’t care how many times it’s been rejected – if it haunts you, we want to see it.

Submit

Spring Issue - Rot & Bloom Temp Closed

The Spring issue of Trashlightt Press is a celebration of the strange beauty that grows from decay. The moment when something broken mutates into something new.

We want work that understands rot isn't the end but the beginning of something wilder. Send us the pieces about transformation, collapse, regrowth, and the messy ecosystems of human life. Show us the fungus growing from your grief, the poems that have fermented with want, the art born of a composting pain.

If it grows in the dark, we want to see it.

Send us:

Fiction about mutation, reinvention, survival, and strange rebirth.
Essays that dig into personal and cultural decay to find somehting growing
Poetry that revels in beuatiful mess
Art that explore rot, nature, and feral transformation
Unclassifiable chaos is always welcome here.

What we are not looking for:

We don't have a lot of rules around here, and we pride ourselves on a place where creatives have room to express their depths. The few rules we have though, are sacred to us, so please keep them in mind.

TrashLight Press publishes only original, human-authored work. Any form of generative AI use is prohibited.
While we are open to adult themes, we do not accept anything classified as erotica or pornography.
There is a limit of one submission per creator per issue.
Please do not submit previously published work to our quarterly issues.

Not Open

Trashlight Mini Series - NoteApp Poetry Temp Closed

We want the poems you swore you'd never show anyone. The stuff you wrote at 3 am, on the subway, in the bathroom stall, after the worst breakup of your life. The rage-typed lines. The cut-and-paste emotional damage. The fragments, unfiltered howls, and accidental brilliance.

If it's buried in your Notes app, we're begging you to send it. We want heartbreak, chaos, anger, and beauty. We want to see the vulnerable pieces of your soul that you tried to burn away.

No judgement, just catharsis.

Selected works will be featured on our website, Instagram, and Substack.

Show up your beautifully broken little notes, crack us open with rawness. We're ready.

Submit up to three poems per entry. Unpublished works only. No format guidelines or line limit.

Not Open