NOTE: If you are looking for the free submit day for our Long Story issue, this is NOT it. If you use this link, it will charge you the regular submission fee, and we will not refund your money. To acceess the free link, check our website or our social media pages for the free link on September 1. It will be open and close on September 1.




It's Time to Submit Your Marathon-Long Stories & Essays!


Originally, the IHLR Long Story was known as The Trifecta, and it included one long winning poem, story, and essay, published in the summers. We were and are still proud to offer longer manuscripts, which most journals cannot publish because they lack the space to do so.

Recently, we've rethought the way we manage this issue. While we still open our submission gates to longer works every fall, we are only looking for longer PROSE: essays and stories between 20 and 40 pages This is the ONLY time of the year in which we consider longer works.  

We will select only ONE winner--a story OR an essay--but instead of a $250 honorarium, the winning writer now receives $1,000.

The reading fee is $15, and, as always, includes a year's subscription.

The winning story or essay will be released electronically as an e-single, with its own chic design, and it will be available for free download via ISSUU to all readers.

You may enter as many times as you wish, but you can only include one manuscript per entry.

Stories and essays must be between 20 and 40 double-spaced manuscript pages, using a 12-point font and one-inch margins.

Do not include your name or address on the manuscript itself.

Manuscripts that do not fall within these parameters will be automatically rejected, without feedback.

Once we receive 250 submissions (if we receive that many), we will close the gate. Otherwise, we simply cannot read the submissions in a timely fashion or complete our selection process for other issues.

Note: Poets with longer manuscripts (or not longer manuscripts) should be submitting their work to our NaPoMo issue. The gate for that issue is open right now, as well.

NOTE: Writers who live outside the United States are encouraged to submit their work, but their entrance fee will result in an electronic subscription--all of our usual electronic issues (three a year) plus electronic versions of our print issues (three a year). Iron Horse can simply no longer afford to ship subscriptions outside the United States.



 

NOTE: If you are looking for the free submit day for our NaPoMo issue, this is NOT it. If you use this link, it will charge you the regular submission fee, and we will not refund your money. To acceess the free link, check our website or our social media pages for the free link on September 1. It will be open and close on September 1.


Time to Submit to the IHLR NaPoMo Issue!

It's been 13 years since we started publishing an annual issue dedicated to National Poetry Month! This is one of our most popular issues, and we always combine new voices with some established champions. Each fall, when we begin hunting the poems we will include, we're excited to see what poets have been working on over the summer.

Our annual NaPoMo issue is now released electronically, via ISSUU, which means anyone can download and read it for free and so our contributors' works will reach a wider audience. Secondly, we're going to be more selective. Instead of 25 poems, we will only be selecting the very best 11 poems: one winner and ten finalists--much like our annual PhotoFinish issue. The issue will be presented in full color, and each manuscript will have its own artwork.

The entrance fee is now $15, which includes a year's subscription for print issues. Plus, while the ten finalists receive our standard honorarium for poems ($50 per poem), the winner will receive $1,000.

Send up to five poems in ONE file.

Do NOT include your cover letter materials in the file with your poems. Simply paste it into the Cover Letter box on the submission form.

Do NOT include your name and address on the manuscript.

Submissions that do not follow these guidelines will be disqualified.

Once we receive 400 submissions (if we receive that many), we will close the gate. Otherwise, we simply cannot read the submissions in a timely fashion or complete our selection process for other issues.

Geffrey Davis, our Poetry Editor, will judge.

NOTE: Writers who live outside the United States are encouraged to submit their work, but their entrance fee will result in an electronic subscription--all of our usual electronic issues (three a year) plus electronic versions of our print issues (three a year). Iron Horse can simply no longer afford to ship subscriptions outside the United States.













 

Use this link to purchase any of our winning chapbooks:

• Maxwell Suzuki's Bust of an Athlete--our most recent chapbook, a collection of poetry
• Shuly Xóchitl Cawood's What The Fortune Tell Would Have Said--our most recent chapbook, a collection of flash essays
• Roseanna Alice Boswell's Imitating Light--a collection of poems.
• Brigitte Lewis's Origin Stories--a collection of stories that reconsider the domestic lives of Biblical couples: Adam and Eve, Lot and Edith, David and Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah, and Adam and Lilith (Adam's second wife).
• Freda Epum's Entryways into Memories That Might Assemble Me--a collection of flash essays on popular culture, depression, identity, and racism in America.
• Jed Myers's Dark Channels, a collection of poetry.
• Christopher Lowe's A Guest of the Program, a collection of linked stories about college football and recruiting programs and coaches.
• Robin Carstensen's In the Temple of Shining Mercy, a collection of poetry.
• Kirk Wisland's Melancholy of Falling Men, a collection of essays on masculinity in America.
• Joe Wilkins's Leviathan, a collection of poetry.
• Michael Hemmingson's Still Life with Iguana. Published posthumously, this is a novella about white hat operatives, assassins, and espionage.
• Brandon Davis Jennings's Waiting for the Enemy, a collection of linked stories about American servicemen in the Middle East.
• Hastings Hensel's Control Burn, a collection of poetry.
• Eric Neuenfeldt's Fall Ends Tomorrow, a collection of short stories.
• Meagan Ciesla's Me, Them, Us, a novella.

Each chapbook costs $10. Be sure to tell us which one(s) you are ordering. 

Due to budget cuts after Covid-19, we can no longer support international postage costs. Readers outside the United States will receive electronic copies only.