Equinox, a biannual digital multimedia journal, showcases poets and artists. While solstices are the extremes of the year, an equinox is equidistant, poised on the edge of one thing or another, the cusp of change or transformation. With this archetypal significance in mind, Equinox strives to explore the contemplative and motivational power of writers and artists; to celebrate how word and image can create a world and then change it.  

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Submission
We invite you to send us your poems and art. We look for contemplative, argumentative, globally aware, despair-resistant, and apathy-abolishing works. 

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Submission Periods and Publication Dates:

We accept submissions via Submittable. 

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Fall Submission: June 10th through August 5th with a publication date of September 22nd.

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Fall Theme:

The theme for Equinox Volume 9 (fall 2025) is “Wide Open.” As always, this theme is open-ended—wide open. You might think of wide-open spaces like prairies, plains, deserts, ocean, sky. Or wide-open possibilities like love, adventure, success, disaster, loss. Maybe your poems or images will be wide open to interpretation. Or maybe they will be wide open with white space as you play with form and arrangements that let the light in. Perhaps you will give the theme a
darker twist, as in “Open Wide,” whether referring to dentists with their cold instruments or politicians with their cold agendas and ideologies that are hard to swallow. We, the editors of Equinox, are wide open to your responses and can’t wait to see what you send us this time.

Note: We are discontinuing the short prose category in this and future issues and will henceforth focus on poetry and image. Prose poems are still an option, but short stories and essays will no longer be included in Equinox. We will continue to offer a $100 prize in both poetry and image, and as always, our focus will be on supporting writers and artists, showcasing their work in beautiful and engaging pages that remain virtually available and free to the public.

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Spring Submission Period: Opens in December and ends in February. Specific dates to be announced.

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Spring Theme: To be announced

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Submission Guidelines:

1. You may submit up to 3 pieces in any one genre (poetry or image) for a reading fee of $5, which will be used toward ongoing programs and publications at hotpoet, and which will fund a $100 “best in show” prize for each category of work (poetry and image) in each edition of Equinox.

2. You may submit more than three pieces or in multiple genres, but separate submissions are needed to do so and separate reading fees will be assessed for each.

3. We do not accept previously published work, whether online, self-published, in chapbooks, in anthologies, or in literary journals. We do accept simultaneous submissions but ask that you immediately withdraw any piece that gets accepted elsewhere for publication.

4. All submissions must be in standard font and formatting. Poetry should be single spaced with double spacing between stanzas. Prose should be double-spaced and include a word count. There is no line limit for poetry.  Images should be in png or jpg format.

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