Poetry Submissions: July 1-31, 2026 for our Fall ISSUE ($3.00 Submission fee; Free Early Bird Submissions for first 50 only, meant for fixed-income writers and students)
Barbara Sabol, the Associate editor of Sheila-Na-Gig online will be curate the fall issue. Barbara lives in Akron, Ohio, close to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, whose trails she knows by heart. She was named Ohio co-Poet of the Year for her sixth book, WATERMARK: Poems of the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 (Alternating Current Press, 2023). Her book, IMAGINE A TOWN, won the 2019 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Poetry Prize. Her most recent book from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions is Mapping the Borderlands: Haibun and Tanka Prose. Other honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and the Arts Alive Outstanding Literary Artist of 2024 award. Barbara’s haiku and haibun have been published widely, and her haibun have been recognized by the Haiku Society of America, short-listed for a Touchstone Award by the Haiku Foundation in 2024, and awarded a 2025 Rachel Sutcliffe Haiku-Arts Prize. Barbara conducts workshops through Literary Cleveland and the Cuyahoga Falls Library. She earned an MFA from Spalding University. When not at her desk, Barbara is working in her garden or walking in the woods. She lives with her bird carver husband and wonder dog.
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR
Sheila-Na-Gig online seeks well-crafted poems with excellent imagery and a strong sense of voice. Our bias leans toward free verse, but we are also open to traditional forms.
Please submit up to THREE previously unpublished poems as one file (.doc, .docx) via the Submission Opportunities link below or on our home page. We do not mind if your work has appeared on your personal webpage or social media. Include a brief bio in the cover note field. Please do not send us AI-generated work.
NEW: ALL SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW READ ANONYMOUSLY
Please be sure that no identifying information is included in the document title or the work itself. Identifying information may only be included in the cover letter and bio, but not in any attached files.
Simultaneous submissions are accepted
If you need to withdraw submissions, please just add a “Message” in Submittable. If you write a “note” in Submittable, editors don’t see these. Please do not ask to EDIT submissions while they are under review. If your work is accepted, you may correct errors at that time.
EDITOR’S PRIZE
We award one Editor’s Prize of $100 for each issue (selected by the curator). All poems accepted for publication are eligible for this prize.
SUBMISSION FEES
We charge a $3.00 reading fee for submissions. These fees help us cover our overhead for the use of Submittable, WordPress, and Zoom. A no-fee Early-bird option is available (for the first 50 submissions in this category) meant for fixed-income and student writers who are less able to pay submission fees. We cap our paid submissions at 150.
IMPORTANT: A note on Deadlines
The submission portals will close at 8:00 pm (Pacific) on the deadline dates noted below. We will not reopen the portals, so please be mindful of the cutoffs. Submit early, as the portals will close when we hit our caps!
July 1– July 31 for Fall issue, published in September
October 1 — October 31 for Winter issue, published in December
January 1 — January 31 for Spring issue, published in March
April 1 — April 30 for Summer issue, published in June
THE STATS
At Sheila-Na-Gig online, we expect to receive 200 submissions for each issue quarterly. Each volume will usually contain 30 to 45 poets (15-22% acceptance rate). Some Sheila-Na-Gig Editions authors (those who have published books with us) will always appear in our issues, but they are not counted among the 30-45 acceptances, to keep that space open to our broader community of writers. Sheila-Na-Gig Editions authors are not eligible for our Editor’s Prize. We strive to reserve space (about 15-20 slots) in each issue for writers new to Sheila-Na-Gig online.
Editors will select up to six poems yearly (drawn from all of our issues, not each issue) to nominate for the Pushcart Prize and/or The Best of the Net.
Sheila-Na-Gig online acquires First North American Serial Rights. All rights revert back to authors upon publication. If your work is later republished, please acknowledge Sheila-Na-Gig online in subsequent journals or poetry collections.
We are actively seeking submissions from underrepresented populations. BIPOC poets and LGBTQ+ poets are encouraged to submit.
If you do not see a SEPARATE link for the Early Bird Submissions after you open the Submittable page with the link above, it means we have met our 50 poets-submissions cap. Our cap for regular submissions is 150. When these portals close, please DO NOT submit work under the tab available for Sheila-Na-Gig Editions’ book authors. Work submitted under that tab will be rejected outright.
