:: Tinderbox Poetry Journal welcomes new and emerging voices. We are a paying market and pay each contributor $15 regardless of number of poems selected. We publish two issues per year on or around Summer and Winter Solstice and nominate for Pushcart Prizes, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net. 

Past contributors include Emily Yoon, Carmen Giménez, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Erika Meitner, Diannely Antigua, Maggie Smith, Aria Aber, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Emilia Phillips, Kelli Russell Agodon, Brandon Amico, Angela Voras-Hills, and Rachel Mennies among many wonderful others. 

The heart of our mission is uplifting new writers, regardless of publication history-- we endeavor to be your first paid publication. 

:: We offer fee-free submissions during each reading period with the exception of our contest. Our final 2023 reading period opens Sept 15th and closes Sept 31st at midnight, PST. 

To offset the costs of running our journal we welcome Tip Jar submissions ($3) on a rolling basis. 

We also offer a feedback submission for $7.

Tip Jar and Feedback Submissions allow us to pay our contributors, sponsor web hosting, offset the cost of submittable, offer free submission periods and sustain vital literary community. 

Our yearly contest charges a submission fee of $15. For $20 we offer feedback on contest submissions. The contest opens August 1st, 2023 and closes August 31st at midnight PST.  This year's judge is Paul Hlava Ceballos. Two winners are selected, one by the contest judge and another by our poetry editors. The BEJ prize winner receives $500 and Majda Gama editor's prize winner receives $500. A portion of our submission fees sponsor submissions for the poetry community. In 2023 we invite poets from the Latinx/Latine community to submit to our contest for free. 

We appreciate your support in showcasing the talented poets of our era and are honored to be trusted with your creative work.

:: To get a better sense of our aesthetic, we encourage submitters to read past issues via our archives. When we read submissions, we seek poems that give us a little shiver, poems that catch the light and compel us to look closer. We don't have restrictions on form or content, and we are interested in featuring poets at all stages of their career.

A few specifics--

:: While we are a poetry-specific journal, we seek to expand the definition of poetry.

:: Please include all poems in one file. One poem per page, up to four poems total. Poems can be longer than one page as long as the submissions packet is no longer than eight pages total. 

:: We do not accept previously published work. This includes work that has been revised from a previously published poem.

:: We ask for first rights, and we also ask that any future publications (congratulations!) of your accepted poems are acknowledged back to Tinderbox Poetry Journal.

:: We accept general submissions through Submittable. Our average response time may take up to six months and sometimes longer. In general, submissions are read for an issue that will appear six months later. For instance, September submissions will be read for the following March issue. 

For regular submissions, please wait 6 months after your submission has been received to query in regards to its status via Submittable or email.  Contest winners are published in our December Solstice issue.

:: We cannot accommodate revisions to work that has been submitted for consideration.

:: We welcome simultaneous submissions. Please let us know if a poem submitted is no longer available by using the message tab in Submittable. If a poem needs to be withdrawn for any reason, use the message tab in Submittable rather than withdraw the entire submission.

:: We request that poets writing “after” poems not only attribute the name of the poet they are responding to, but the title of the original poem as well. Additionally, if a submitted poem quotes lines from another poet, we ask that the source text be properly attributed as an endnote.

:: If you are a previous contributor, please wait at least one year after publication before submitting again.