Unbound Ink is open for submissions from February 1 to May 15, 2026, or until we reach our submissions cap. We are grateful for the opportunity to read your work.
General Submission Guidelines:
We read each submission anonymously. Please see our Mission Statement.
Important: Do not include your name or contact information anywhere in your submission. If we accept your work, we will request your name and bio so that we can include this information when your piece is published.
- Please send only unpublished work. If your poem, story, or essay has been published in a journal, in a blog, or on social media, it is not eligible for publication in Unbound Ink.
- Simultaneous submissions are welcome. If your work is accepted elsewhere, please notify us as soon as possible.
- We obtain first rights to online publication only, and authors retain copyrights of their work. We ask that you wait three months before publishing the piece elsewhere, online or in print.
- Submissions are open internationally, and inclusion of other languages is welcome, as long as the poem, story, or essay is primarily written in English.
- Currently, we only accept translations by the original author.
- AI-generated work will be automatically declined.
- While we don’t charge a submission fee, we are (at this time) unable to pay our authors.
- Upon submission, you will be added to our mailing list. You may unsubscribe at any time.
Genre-Specific Guidelines:
We consider previously unpublished:
Fiction
- Submit one short story, up to 5,000 words.
- Submit one or two flash fiction pieces, up to 1,000 words each, in a single document.
Poetry
- Submit three to five poems, up to ten pages in a single document.
Nonfiction
- Submit one creative nonfiction piece, up to 3,500 words.
Visual art
We accept visual art for our online covers only. Visual art specs generally require a high-resolution digital format (like JPEG or TIFF) at 300 DPI or higher.