We are proud to announce the release of Shuly Xóchitl Cawood's What the Fortune Tell Would Have Said. Cawood's chapbook was the winner of our 2022 chapbook contest.

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You can purchase the chapbook here or read more about it here.

As part of our celebration of the new year, we release the annual PhotoFinish e-issue right as the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve. The issue contains poems and prose all centered around one image, with the prompt photo changing every year. Our competition for this year's PhotoFinish is opening July 1st, and the prompt is available now! The winner of the competition will receive $250 with each finalist receiving $50 and publication in the e-issue. Writers, time to get started writing about this year's photo.

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You can read more about PhotoFinish here.

We are thrilled to announce the release of our 2022 NaPoMo issue! This issue features our winning poem for this year, Bryana Joy's "Summer of the Oyster Catchers," and ten more incredible finalists. We also have columns and beautiful artwork, so be sure to check out the issue. And if you're interested in being a part of our NaPoMo issue, we'll be open for submissions again in the fall, so check back soon!

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You can read the latest NaPoMo issue here.

We have our winner for the 2021 Iron Horse chapbook competition! Congratulations to Roseanna Alice Boswell for her collection, Imitating Light, our winner this year. Her chapbook will be published in the fall.

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Roseanna Alice Boswell is a queer poet from Upstate New York. She holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English at Oklahoma State University. In her spare time, she serves as a poetry editor at Arcturus Magazine. Roseanna lives in Oklahoma with her husband and their pet hamster. This is her first poetry collection.

We are pleased to announce the semi-finalists and finalists for our IHLR 2021 poetry chapbook competition. Reading through all of our submissions this year has been a genuine pleasure, and we look forward to announcing the winner in the coming days. Congratulations to all our semi-finalists and finalists!

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You can view the full list here.

We are so excited to announce the release of our annual National Poetry Month issue, now available online. COVID-19 forced us to make a lot of changes at Iron Horse, we were still able to bring all of these beautiful poems out into the world, and we hope you enjoy them with us. Congratulations to Cassandra Cleghorn, our winner this year, and to all the finalists: Jessica Dionne, Dante di Stefano, S. M. Ellis, Adam J. Gellings, Kathryn Haemmerle, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Susie Meserve, Ayesha Shibli, Sarah Snyder, and Leslie Williams.

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You can read all of the poems on Issuu here.

"We love all of our projects and publications here at Iron Horse, but one of our favorite activities is regularly feeding our Instagram account, @lunchwithironhorse, some of the delicious meals we’re munching alongside the equally delectable books we’re devouring. There’s just something simpatico in the language of eating and reading." So said Katie Cortese, our fiction editor and the interim editor-in-chief for the Feast issue, our newest themed issue, available for order now.

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You can pick up a copy of our newest themed issue here, and be sure to check out our food-themed Instagram here!

Every year, we run one issue that allows for any submissions, with no theme or genre restrictions. We are always so excited to see all the incredible submissions we get, and last year was no exception. We are thrilled to announce the release of our annual Open issue, 22.4. With all the hardships this past year has brought, we like to think literature may be more important than ever. We hope you agree and will join us in reading through our newest release.

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You can pick up a copy of the Open issue here.

Our newest chapbook publication, Origin Stories by Brigitte Lewis, is available now. This year's judge, Kerry Neville, had the following to say about Lewis's work: "I love the surprising and satisfying way these stories interrogate our mythical and mundane meet-cute beginnings, where men are ‘raised to be earthquakes’ and women are ‘raised to be split.’ The author is acutely observant of how we have been shaped and misshaped by our desires and shame, fidelities and infidelities, and independence and interdependence since our first self-conscious naked longings for each other.”

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You can pick up a copy here.

Our 2021 chapbook competition is now open to submissions. For this year, we are focusing on poetry submissions. Submissions should be 28-36 pages and length. Send us your best work here! Winners this year will be selected by our editors and will receive a $1,000 honorarium.

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Submissions will be open from now until Mar 15th. We will also have a free submit day on Mar 1st, with a limited number of slots available for free chapbook submissions. Learn more about our chapbook competition and how to submit here, and thanks so much for trusting us with your work.

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Our fiction winner of the 2020 Trifecta competition, Kate Blackwood's "Silver Tongue," is available now as an e-issue. You can read the entire story, for free, right here!

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“I wrapped the bell’s silver tongue with tissue then with wrapping paper then with tape and re-wrapped the box. Then I went out for a run. The sky was clear. The low sun caught crystals in the snow, and the air tasted like sparkling water. I felt strong.”

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We are pleased to announce the winner of our annual Long Story competition: Jill Christman, for her essay "Falling." Her winning entry will be published in Summer of 2021 as a digital issue and she will receive $1,000. To learn more about our Long Story competition and read the list of this year's finalists, click here.

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We are thrilled to announce the winner of our 2021 National Poetry Month competition: Cassandra Cleghorn, for her poem "You Ask What I was Like Back Then." Her poem, along with all our finalists, will be published in March, and she will receive $1,000. Read on here for a list of all our finalists and semi-finalists.

Our submission gate for our annual themed issue is open. For 2021, we want to see your poems, stories, and essays that address ideas of power: authority, empowerment, privilege, unity, muscle, independence, strength, fortitude, and protest.

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Submissions are open from now until Nov 20th. As with all of our issues, we have a special free submission day, this time on Nov 1st. So please, pull out your best work about power (or write something new!) and send it along to us. We can't wait to read it.

The winner of our 2020 PhotoFinish is Erica Plouffe Lazure. Please join us in congratulating her and all of our amazing finalists!

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Michelle Lerner | Sam Kaspar | Kate Stadt | Whitney Rio-Ross | Sarah-Jane Crowson  | Michele Randall | Julia Singer | K. K. Fox | Alice Turski | Susan Carroll Jewell

We're thrilled to announce one of our 2020 Trifecta winners, Kate Blackwood. Her story, "Silver Tongue," won the prize in fiction.

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Kate Blackwood worked as a journalist in the Detroit area before earning an MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her stories have appeared in Red Line Blues, The Metamer Quarterly, and elsewhere. Kate lives in Ithaca, New York, where she works as a writer and web editor for Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences. She is a board member of Ithaca City of Asylum, a project that helps writers whose voices are threatened and whose lives are in danger.

We're thrilled to announce one of our 2020 Trifecta winners, Ruby Al-Qasem. Her essay, "The Motherpeace," won the prize in nonfiction.

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Ruby Al-Qasem’s work has appeared in The Baltimore Review and been a finalist in Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net Anthology. Her essay “The Girls” was a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2019. She has just completed her PhD in creative writing at University of North Texas, where she served as the Nonfiction Contest Editor for American Literary Review. She lives in the Dallas area.

We're thrilled to announce one of our 2020 Trifecta winners, Eva H.D. Her poem, "The Curse of the Magi," won the prize in poetry. We hope you'll join us in reading her poem as part of our long story series when we publish H.D.'s piece in November!

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Eva H.D. wrote Rotten Perfect Mouth, won the Montreal International Poetry Prize for "38 Michigans," and was a 2017 MacDowell fellow. She works in your favourite bar.

We're pleased to announce the release of Iron Horse's National Poetry Month Issue (22.2). This all poetry issue features work from George Bilgere, Traci Brimhall, Taylor Byas, Grant Clauser, Sarah Cooper, Chris Ellery, Oscar Enriquez, Christian Anton Gerard, Clemonce Heard, Rachel Mennies, Sarah Nance, Janice Northerns, Cindy Juyoung Ok, Emily Perez, Doug Ramspeck, Anna Sandy-Elrod, and Troy Varvel.

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You can pick up a copy of our NaPoMo issue here.

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Kerry Beth Neville has selected Brigitte Lewis's chapbook, Origin Stories, as the winner of the 2020 IHLR Chapbook competition. Brigitte Lewis's work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Hobart, Southampton Review, a Lambda Literary award-winning issue of Foglifter, and more. She is working on a novel about climate change, grieving, and creating language for a world increasingly defined by what is or will become absent. She lives in Oregon and can always smell a mixture of sage and juniper in the air.

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The submission gate for the 2020 IHLR Photo-Finish opens tomorrow morning, July 1, at 8 a.m. The Free Submit Day has been bumped to July 17. Further information can be found  here.

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Charles Patterson, our editor's beloved father and the designer of the IHLR colophon, layout, and covers for twenty years, died on June 16, after a near four-year battle with leukocytosis. His passing has left the Patterson family stunned and struggling to grasp his absence. We apologize for production delays and the slow opening of the PhotoFinish gates. It will take a bit of time to adjust.

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The Iron Horse office has closed for the summer. Our submission gates, including NewsFlash, will be closed until Aug 15--except for the Photo-Finish issue, which opens to flash submissions on June 1. If you currently have an in-progress submission with us, you can expect a response in two weeks. If you have work appearing in a fall issue, we will stay in touch. We still do not have access to our office--supplies, the printer, back stock. We cannot send out new issues or fulfill purchases until campus opens, which we believe will be sometime in June. We will honor all purchases and release both issues then.

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We are so pleased to announce the finalists of our annual Trifecta competition. In poetry: Eva H.D., Mary Moore, Brian Orth, and Sara Moore Wagner. In nonfiction: Ruby Al-Qasem and Eve Ettinger. In fiction: Kate Blackwood, Bino Realuyo, Peter Stavros, and Gina Troisi. We hope to announce the winners by the end of May! Stay tuned for more information!

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We missed our usual summer release for last year's Trifecta winners (for various reasons we won't go in to), but we're dropping them now, and we hope that the timing is actually better. If you're looking for something to read during the COVID-19 quarantine, we've got three terrific singles: Elissa C. Huang's story "Haw Flakes and Dried Squid," Susanna Childress's essay "Four Before I Begin Again," and Benjamin Gucciardi's poem "Rendering the Pose."  Read them right here.

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Texas Tech University has officially moved business operations off campus. Our team is working from home. While we continue to read submissions, our response time may be delayed. We will post updates as things progress. Additionally, because we cannot access our supplies, printer, or back stock, we will not be sending out new issues or filling orders until the shelter-in-place rules are lifted. We will honor all purchases as soon as we can. Spring 2020 issues will be released then, as well. Thank you for your patience.

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We've just released our Open Issue (21.4)! This issue features some terrific poems, stories, and essays by Eleanor Mary Boudreau, T. Clear, Sara Hirsch, Clio Simmons, Robin Rozanski, Michael Welch, and Joan Potter. Plus, it features fiction and poetry from AWP's Intro Award Winners: Katerina Ivanov, Alizabeth Worley, and Caitlin Wilson. 

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Grab this terrific issue here for $5. 

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We've just released Freda Epum’s 2019 winning chapbook selected by Lacy M. Johnson, Entryways into memories that might assemble me,. Freda Epum (FREE-DUH EYY-POOM) is a Nigerian-American writer and artist from Tucson, Arizona. Her work has been published or is forthcoming from Bend- ing Genres, Cosmonauts Avenue, Heavy Feather Review, Nat.Brut, Third Coast, Atticus Review, and Rogue Agent. Don’t miss your chance to buy a copy of Epum’s newest chapbook,  right here.

For the IHLR 2020 Chapbook Competition, we will select a winning collection of FICTION: a novella, or four to five ten-page stories, or a collection of flash stories, or some similar set-up, but all FICTION. We are not accepting hybrids this year. The winning manuscript will be published in the Fall of 2020 as a separate issue (Volume 22.4). Full-color cover art will reflect the collection’s content and emphasize its title, not the name of Iron Horse. The winner also receives a $1,000 honorarium and 15 copies. This year's judge is Kerry Beth Neville. Learn more about Neville or see the guidelines here.

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The IHLR staff is pleased to release our 2019 PhotoFinish--our annual finale, released at midnight on New Year's Eve. This year, the issue contains poems, stories, and essays in response to the photo we provided of a cracked and broken egg. Contributors include M. Soledad Caballero, Neil Carpathios, Jason Gray, Susan Jewell, N. R. Robinson, Katherine Seluja, Leah Skay, Matthew Sutton, Charles Venable, Vivian Wagner, and this year's winner, Alice Duggan. Read it for free right here! And watch for next year's photo--we'll post it in May and accept submissions all during the month of June.

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The IHLR submission gates are soon to be open! Every fall, Iron Horse accepts submissions for its annual Trifecta, which is your chance to publish those marathon manuscripts most journals won't consider. Poets should submit a single poem, 10-20 pages long. Prose writers should submit a story or essay that runs between 25 and 40 pages. The entry fee is $10, which includes a year's subscription. The winners--a poet, an essayist, and a fiction writer--each receive $250.

Submit your manuscripts HERE starting on October 20th!

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Well, we didn't make it to AWP20. And now classes have been canceled for two weeks while we move our campus to a virtual space. It's a ghost town around here, like something out of a futuristic end-of-times movie. So, for our current flash sale, we've got our Apocalypse Issue (21.1) for only $3. Get yourself something good--and appropriate!--to read while you self-isolate. Stay safe and healthy--

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Buy a copy right  here for $3 (Reg. $5). 

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Our 2019-2020 gates are officially open! Submit now, though October 7, 2019, for our annual NaPoMo Issue. Send us all things poetry--your very best. The FREE SUBMIT DAY for this issue is Sept 20. The link will go live that morning at 8 a.m., and you can submit for free through 10 p.m. Head's up: while we normally respond personally to every manuscript we receive, we no longer respond personally to submissions we receive on free days. Submit right HERE!

On Thursday, Sept 19, 2019, fiction writer Nick White will be on campus, as part of the Creative Writing Program Reading Series. He will give a reading at 7:30 p.m. A native of Mississippi (with a deep Southern accent!), Nick White is the author of the novel How to Survive a Summer (Blue Rider/Penguin, 2017) and the short story collection Sweet & Low (Blue Rider/Penguin, 2018). He is an Assistant Professor of English at The Ohio State University's MFA Program in Creative Writing. His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in a variety of places, including The Kenyon Review, Guernica, The Hopkins Review, Indiana Review, The Literary Review, and Lit Hub.

Iron Horse Literary Review is proud to announce that Alice Duggan's poem, "To a Dropped Egg," is the winner of the 2019 IHLR PhotoFinish! She will receive $250. Finalists, who will also be published in the issue and will receive $50 each, include M. Soledad Caballero, Neil Carpathios, Jason Gray, Susan Jewell, N. R. Robinson, Katherine Seluja, Leah Skay, Matthew Sutton, Charles Venable, and Vivian Wagner. Read all of them--for free!--right here at midnight one New Year's Eve.

Lacy M. Johnson has selected Freda Epum's Entryways into memories that might assemble me, as the 2019 IHLR Chapbook winner. A Nigerian-American writer and artist, Epum has published work in Bending Genres, Cosmonauts Avenue, Third Coast, Atticus Review, and other journals. She received her MFA from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. A 2018 Voices of Our Nation/VONA fellow, she has also received support from the Anderson Center at Tower View and the Jordan Goodman Prize. She is at work on her first book, a dark humor pop-culture inspired memoir about race, mental illness, and HGTV. She lives in Cincinnati.

We're delighted to announce the poetry winner for the 2019 IHLR Trifecta. Congratulations to Benjamin Gucciardi, whose poem, "Rendering the Pose," impressed us with its ghost-filled landscape, personal narrative, and textured language. He will receive $250, and we'll publish his poem this June, for free!

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Gucciard's poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2018, Indiana Review, Orion Magazine, RHINO poetry, and other journals. He is the winner of the Milton Kessler Memorial Prize from Harpur Palate and a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize. He works with refugee and immigrant youth in Oakland, California.

We're pleased to announce the fiction winner for the 2019 IHLR Trifecta. Congratulations to Elissa C. Huang, whose story, "Haw Flakes and Dried Squid," shook us with its compelling protagonist and seamless plot. She will receive a prize of $250, and we will publish her story this June, free to anyone who wishes to read it!

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Huang received her MFA in Dramatic Writing for NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where she was awarded the John Golden Playwriting Prize and the Goldberg Prize in Playwriting. Her work has been published in Cheat River Review and Hyphen Magazine.

Today, we released Jed Myers's winning chapbook of poem, Dark's Channels. Jed is the author of Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press, forthcoming), and two previous chapbooks. His poems have appeared The Greensboro Review,  Southern Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, Prime Num-ber Magazine, and many other journals. Don't miss your chance to buy a copy of his latest, right here.

We're pleased to announce the Nonfiction winner for the 2019 IHLR Trifecta competition. Congratulations to Susanna Childress, whose essay, "Four Before I Begin Again," impressed us with its sensitivity, candor, and raw narrative power. She will receive a prize of $250, and we will publish her essay this June, free of charge to our subscribers!

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Childress's two books of poetry won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and the Society of Midland Authors Award. A book of essays, Extremely Yours, is forthcoming from Awst Press. She lives along the western shore of Michigan.

We've selected the finalists for the 2019 IHLR Trifecta competition. Congratulations to these fiction writers and poets, who sent us some very fine marathon-long manuscripts!

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Fiction: Nat Akin, Jim Daniels, Yakira Frank, Elissa C. Huang, Mary Lannon, Gavin McCall, Daniel Paul, Jamie Lyn Smith, Easton Smith, and Frank Soos.

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Poetry: Christopher Cokinos, Benjamin Bucciardi, Gregory Kimbrell, Elias Siqueiros, and Jennifery Sperry Steinorth.

We've just released the 2018 IHLR PhotoFinish! Read the terrific stories, poems, and essays written in response to our annual photo prompt. It's free! Included is work by Holly Teresa Baker, Kari Flickinger, Avital Gad-Cykman, David Kikuchi, Susan Kikuchi, K. T. Landon, Jennifer Martelli, Timothy Reilly, Anna Scotti, Penn Stewart, and David Sullivan. Read it right here!

We've opened the submission gates for the 2019 IHLR Trifecta! Send us your marathon-long stories, poems, and essays--it's the only time of year that we read them! Gates remain open till midnight on November 25. Our free submit day is November 2. For more information, check out our Trifecta guidelines.

Iron Horse Literary Review is proud to announce that Jennifer Martelli's poem, "Oxblood," is the winner of the 2018 IHLR PhotoFinish! Finalist include Holly Teresa Baker's "What We Lost," Kari Flickinger's "Two Hymns," Avital Gad-Cykman's "Devilish," David Kikuchi's "the Song of Every Movie's Eagle," Susan Kikuchi's "things we left behind," K. T. Landon's "The Key," Timothy Reilly's "Lost & Found," Anna Scotti's Grace at the Pavilion," Penn Stewart's "Lost and Found," and David Sullivan's "Catpurse Canticle." Read all of them--for free!--right here at midnight on New Year's Eve.

Iron Horse Literary Review is proud to launch IHLR NewsFlash. For this series, we're seeking brief poems, flash fiction, and flash nonfiction that respond to the most pressing events occurring right now. Every Monday, year-round, we'll open the IHLR NewsFlash gate, will receive the first 20 submissions, and publish the very best of them at IHLR Online the following week. At the end of the year, we'll pay a $200 honorarium to the writer of the best NewsFlash from that year. Get more information here!

We've opened the gates for our 10th annual NaPoMo issue! Submit through September 30th, with a free Submit day on September 13th!

Lacy M. Johnson has been selected as the judge for the 2019 IHLR Chapbook competition, in prose this year. She is the author of The Reckonings (Scribner, 2018), The Other Side (Tin House, 2014), and Trespasses: A Memoir (U of Iowa P, 2012). She has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography and a 2014 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writer pick. Deadline for submission to the 2019 competition is March 1.

Tyehimba Jess has selected Jed Myers's Dark's Channels as the 2018 IHLR Chapbook winner. Myers is the author of Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press, forthcoming), and two previous chapbooks. Recent honors include the Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry, The Southeast Review's Gearhart Poetry Prize, and The Tishman Review's Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize. Dark Channel's will be released this fall.

We're thrilled and honored to announce that Iron Horse Literary Review's Best of Prose Issue, 20.1, was listed as a Notable Issue of 2018 in Best American Essays, 2019. Congratulations to all the terrific essayists who appear in the anthology and to those whose work was also mentioned as "Notable." 

For $10, buy your own Best of Prose Issue, 20.1, HERE  and also receive the Best of Poetry Issue, 20.2, as part of the anniversary double issue!  

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