the ihlr chapbook
For the 2021 Chapbook Competition, we will select a winning collection of POETRY. Manuscripts should be 28 - 36 pages, double-spaced, each poem starting on a new page. The winning manuscript will be published in the Fall of 2021 as a separate issue (Volume 23.4). Full-color cover art will reflect the collection’s content and emphasize its title, not the name of Iron Horse. The published chapbook will look like the single-author book that it is. The winner also receives a $1,000 honorarium and 15 copies.
Due to Covid-19 budget cuts, the editors at Iron Horse will serve as judges until our full budget is reinstated.
guidelines
• Entries for poetry chapbooks must be between 28 and 36 pages, with each poem starting on a new page. (In years, when we are consider prose chapbooks, manuscripts should be between 40 and 56 pages, with each story/chapter/essay starting on a new page.)
• Manuscripts must be typed, with one-inch margins, 12-point font.
• While individual portions of the chapbook may have been published elsewhere, the chapbook as a whole must be previously unpublished.
• The author’s name and contact information must appear on the Submittable form, but it must NOT appear anywhere on the manuscript. There should be no footers or headers containing the author's identity. And no bio page. Manuscripts with biographical information will be disqualified.
• Do not include acknowledgments of previous publications. Manuscripts including an acknowledgments page will be disqualified. • Pages must be numbered.
• The $15 entry fee includes a year's subscription to IHLR.
• We only accept electronic manuscripts, submitted as ONE pdf file, with the entire chapbook in that single file.
• Submissions will be accepted between January 15 and March 15.
free submit day
We will accept 20 free submissions on March 1, 2020. On that day, we will open a special gate, revealed on our social media pages (connect with us below) and here on our website. We will accept only one free submission per person (automatically disqualifying subsequent free submission attempts), and we will only accept the first twenty. Once we hit 20 submissions in the free gate, we will close it. Free submissions will not receive a subscription. We offer this opportunity in the hopes of targeting writers who cannot afford to enter otherwise. If you can afford to enter, please do not take one of the 20 available free slots.
January 15, 2020 to March 15, 2021: Submit here.
To submit on March 1 for free (with no subscription): Submit here on that day.
results
We'll announce finalists and the winner here, the finalists in late spring, the winner during the summer.
2020 semi-finalists
Benny Allen, Tales from the Modern Age
Nick Almeida, How to Shoot Grooms
Sean Bernard, (a rebuttal)
Michael Chin, Time to Go Home
Joyce Goldenstern, Old Woman and Eel
Alissa Hattman, We All Fall Down
Faith Holsaert, You Are, You Know You Are
Gina Ocshner, Kindred Spirits
Jill Talbot, A Distant Town: Stories
2020 finalists
Sean Bernard, Therapy
Kim Bradley, How to Draw a Circle
Malcolm Dixon, Death in the Cathedral
Jaclyn Dwyer, The Drowned Maidens Club
Dave Kaczynski, Way of Being
Sam Kaspar, dead cat on fox
Roz Spafford, Last Rites
2020 winner!
Brigitte Lewis, Origin Stories
About the 2020 winning manuscript by Brigitte Lewis, Kerry Beth Neville said: "I read Origin Stories with enormous pleasure from the first to the last sentence. It is an intimate, ambitious and witty collection that delves into the tangled domestic lives of famous Biblical couples: Adam and Eve (wife #2), Lot and Edith, David and Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah, and Adam (again) and Lilith (wife #1). In 'Adam + Eve + Eukaryotes,' the first story of the collection, Adam asks Eve, 'Don't you think we're in this story together?' This double-negative query reveals Adam hopes for Eve’s easy reassurance. After all, she is born of his rib so forever of his body. Eve, however, cryptically responds, 'I know who I am.' This brief Q&A echoes across this collection. I love the surprising and satisfying way these stories interrogate our mythical and mundane MeetCute beginnings, where men are 'raised to be earthquakes' and women are 'raised to be split.'"