The theme of our Spring 2026 edition is:

A FORMAL FEELING

Submission period: August 1, 2025 - September 30, 2025 

August 1 - 14, 2025: Free submissions (may close early if Submittable's caps are reached)

August 15, 2025 - September 30, 2025: Paid submissions ($3)*

Translation submissions are free throughout the entire period

Guest Editors for Poetry:

Sherre Vernon & Jeremy Teddy Karn

“After great pain, a formal feeling comes,”  Emily Dickinson noted. Writers have long employed formal constraint to  contain intense emotion. Sometimes, the feeling itself is formal,  static, stiff, ceremonious. Time collapses and “the Feet, mechanical, go  round” until we can let go.

For this issue, send us formal experimentation and traditional  forms; send your work of letting go and your work in the wake of great  pain; send us your mechanical feet and your compressed time; the  intensity that can barely be articulated and the cavities carved out by  the heat of the moment after they’ve hardened and cooled.

General guidelines:

We welcome your previously unpublished stories, essays, poetry, graphic art, and genres that have no name. (We consider self-published work and work posted on internet venues, personal websites and social media as previously published.)

• Only one submission per reading period, please! Multiple submissions (including submissions to multiple genres) will be automatically disqualified.
• We will consider simultaneous submissions but ask that you retract your work immediately if it is accepted for publication elsewhere.
• If your work appears in our current or previous issue, we kindly ask that you refrain from submitting to our upcoming issue.
• Please include a short bio (50 -100 words) with your submission.
• We welcome unpublished translations of original work, provided the translator has obtained permission from the author. Please include a copy of the original work.
• We welcome work that challenges conventions of form, style, and content.
• We retain first serial rights to work published in The Ilanot Review. At the time of publication, all rights revert back to the author. However, The Ilanot Review retains the right to publish the piece(s) in any subsequent issue or anthology, whether in print or online. Should you decide to republish the piece elsewhere, we kindly ask that you cite The Ilanot Review as a place of previous publication.
• See individual submission categories for specific guidelines. 

* The Ilanot Review is a volunteer operation. Submission fees go towards our web hosting fees and Submittable service fees.