Submissions

Inkhorn Review is a literary journal. We publish an online issue every quarter, and once a year we gather a selection of that work into a printed annual.

We are currently open to submissions, and we read year-round.

What we're looking for

Poems and short prose that know what they're doing. We are not committed to a school or a style. The editor is a poet himself and is deliberately trying to publish past the edge of his own taste, so if your work is good and strange and not what a journal like this usually runs, send it anyway.

What we respond to: precision, a voice that sounds like a person rather than a genre, and endings that earn themselves. What we're slower to take: work that explains its own feeling, or announces what the reader should conclude.

We read everyone the same way. We don't care where else you've published, or whether you've published at all.

What to send

Poetry — up to five poems in a single document. Any length, any form.

Prose — one piece up to 3,000 words. Fiction, nonfiction, and the things in between are all welcome. If you write very short, you may send up to three flash pieces (up to 1,000 words each) in one document.

Micro — you may send up to three flash pieces (up to 250 words each) in one document.

Please send one submission at a time. Wait to hear from us before sending more.

Put your name and contact information in the document. We don't read blind, and we'd rather know who we're talking to.

How to submit

We currently accept submissions by email, temporarily to terry@terryheath.com

Attach a single document — .docx, .rtf, .pdf, or plain text. Poems can go in one file together. Include a short note if you'd like, but it isn't required and it won't count for or against you.

Simultaneous submissions

Yes, please. We assume you're sending your work elsewhere, and we'd think less of you if you weren't. Just tell us right away if a piece is taken somewhere else so we can stop reading it.

If part of a batch of poems is placed, withdraw that poem and let us keep considering the rest.

Response time

We aim to respond within 60 days. If it's been longer than 90, please query — it means something went wrong on our end, not yours.

Fees and payment

There is no submission fee, and there never will be. We're not going to charge writers for the privilege of being read.

We don't pay contributors yet. When the journal earns enough to change that, it will change. Contributors whose work appears in the printed annual receive a copy.

What publication means

If we take your work, it will appear in the next quarterly online issue and stay in the archive after that. You will be able to share your own page as a contributor.

Once a year we assemble a printed annual drawn from the four online issues. That selection is the editor's, not a popularity contest, and being published online carries no promise of appearing in print. If your work is chosen for the annual, we'll tell you before it goes to press.

By accepting our offer of publication you grant Inkhorn Review, and its successors and assigns, first publication rights, the right to keep the piece in our online archive, and the right to reprint it in the printed annual and in anthologies drawn from our own archive. All other rights are yours, and all rights return to you on publication. Reprint your work wherever you like — we only ask that Inkhorn Review be credited as the first place it appeared.

We do not accept previously published work, and we count a personal blog, a newsletter, or a public social media post as published. Work that has only been shared in a workshop or a private group is fine.

On artificial intelligence

We publish human writing. Please don't send us work that was generated by AI, in whole or in part.

We're not talking about your spell-checker, and we're not going to interrogate anyone about their research habits. The line we care about is the one the Authors Guild draws: generating text and presenting it as your own writing is a different thing from using a tool in the background. If you want a thoughtful account of where that line sits, theirs is the best we've read — AI Best Practices for Authors.

The short version, and ours: the words and the thinking should be yours. That's what we're here to publish, and it's the only reason a small journal like this is worth running.

Who reads your work

Right now, mostly the editor and a few readers. As the journal grows we'll bring on more readers, and when we do we'll name them here.

Questions: terry@terryheath.com