Hello and happy 2026 to all!

We are off and running as our 10th year begins. We’ve reopened to submissions, and we’re logging them in and reading as we go. Poets: please note that we closed to poetry Friday due to heavy volume. Stay tuned to our Submit page for updates.

A few things to share today, most notably, thank you to all who supported The Sunlight Press during our end-of-year fundraising drive. We’d offered a ($500) challenge grant as we regularly do in December and donors more than matched it — donating $3,660. Thanks so much to everyone. When we say we couldn’t do it without you, believe us. Thanks to our supporters, we begin the new year on firmer fiscal footing and can continue financially supporting artists. Woohoo!

On to other good news. In December we learned that The Sunlight Press was listed for the second time in the top 100 of the chillsubs.com FISH list (Finest Independent Story Houses— “the ultimate ranking of the world’s liveliest indie magazines,” curated by author and editor Charlie Fish). This year we ranked No. 7 on the list. Very exciting! Additionally, we landed in the top 10 of the chillsubs.com Best Lit Magazines of 2025 in the category of “new writer friendly.” You can read more about this and other categories on their site. We appreciate the work they do curating these lists and championing literary magazines.

While recognition is great, our work responding quickly to writers and putting out the best work possible continues regardless. We take pride in responding personally to all submitters. We may get backed up reading work but you will hear from us about your submission. On that note, we reiterate: please read the guidelines on our Submit page before hitting send on your work. We regularly receive work that is very different from what we publish and does not follow our guidelines. Take a look at our About page too, and peruse the site to see what we publish. Keep in mind that we are a small (and volunteer) staff juggling and reviewing a lot of work. Thank you.

Other reminders. To reiterate, we are now closed to poetry submissions. Stay tuned to our Submit page for a reopening date, as well as to make sure we haven’t closed to something else. That could happen as work continues coming in.

We thank you for visiting, writing, reading, donating, and for being here.

Cheers,
Beth and Rudri

Rudri Patel & Beth Burrell
Editors
The Sunlight Press

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