Submission Guidelines:

To glean from the words of Thomas Howard, we believe poetry is not simply a  “gingering up of language” but “the purifying and concentrating of language to its absolutely ferocious purity.” If poetry truly is “the supreme attempt to purify and concentrate and distill language to this almost remorseless power to speak to us,” we desire poems that pursue this ferocious purity in diction, imagery, music, and form. While the pursuit may be purity, we want to see the journey from low, pitted places. After all, the Bible is full of raw stories that reveal the gritty reality of fractured humanity. We treasure how he compares poetry to the “prick of a blue flame” in a bunsen burner, instead of an untamed bonfire. This image encapsulates the necessity for crisp, refined, hot-to-the-touch, surprising language that is intentional and free of cliches. At this time, we cannot accept concrete poetry for the sake of formatting.

Forms: As a free-verse forward journal, we also invite a vast array of forms reaching from sonnets, villanelles, prose poems, haikus, elegies, odes, ekphrastic, ghazals…we value variety and experimentation.

At heart, this journal believes that each poem exists as a little “vessel of light,” made up of life-giving words, with the power to ignite lasting life within readers’ souls who, in return, carry poems into this dim world as beacons of hope.

Contrary to poetry, essays have the power to take us on a different kind of intimate journey that is narrative driven. We look for short form, devotional essays that feel personal and real while shedding practical, Biblical light on the darkness one has faced or is still facing. These are essays that are raw, real, and artistically expressed. They are essentially creative non-fiction that shine in the shadows and depths of life. Integrity of scripture is essential, integration of Bible verses relevant to your essay are preferred, and literary sources or quotes are invited. Please include the translation you are using when implementing scripture. We encourage writers to read Jessie van Eerden's essay, "When the Season is Fitting" as a good reference. Ultimately, these essays carry a devotional tone and poetry that seeks the light of Heaven amid the lives of this dim world.

These essays show:

A Dark to Light Perspective

Real Life Epiphany

Literary Wisdom

Insight that Sparks Hope

We desire our short stories to feel like intimate discoveries that feel found by the reader for the reader. We also look for the volta, a clear point of no return where epiphany strikes and characters make a kind leap of faith that changes both the characters and readers forever— fearless narratives that are inherently honest in voice, showing raw transformation that is true to life in the deepest sense. While we appreciate genre fiction and recognize its value in faith-focused writing—as evidenced by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien—at this time, we are seeking stories that are rooted in the real world with tangible brushes of the divine. We do not accept erotica, graphic violence, R-rated content, or fanfiction.

1,500 to 3,500 words

Format: double spaced, times new roman font. 

Please follow Standard Manuscript Format (https://www.shunn.net/format/story/), 

although we do not need your physical mailing address included.

Please send us one short story per submission period. We are an editorial journal, but as we seek to glorify our Creator, we ask that you send us work you have crafted with excellence that is polished, proofread, and ready for publication.

Are you fond of epistolary literature? Vessels of Light is excited to introduce letters as a new genre that invites writers to try their hand at the ancient art of analog that feels both timeless and contemporary today.

Letters may be fictionalized or real, but our requests"?

• Hand write or type write it out

• Make sure to address it to someone fictionalized or real

• Give it a signature

• Email us a scan or pdf of the letter so we may showcase it

• Letters may be one page long of any word count, written in print or cursive, and even a medley of both if that is your writing style.

FOR OUR SUMMER 2026 ISSUE :

Center the landscape of your letter around the coast, any coast, integrating oceanic themes into the narrative.

Submissions Are NOW CLOSED for our 2026 Summer Issue.

JULY 1ST IS OUR PUBLICATION DAY

We publish semi-annually ( two issues per year), rotating between a spring/fall and summer/winter schedule, with additional opportunities and projects arising for special editions, such as poetry workshops and write nights. We do this for the sake of excellence; we believe in quality over quantity, the ravishing over the rushed, and want to ensure we put out our most moving, meaningful work.

Summer 2026: Message in a Bottle

From Edward Hirsch’s article, “Heartland”

Submissions NOW closed.

JULY 1ST, 2026 PUBLICATION DAY

For our forthcoming Summer issue, we found inspiration in poet Edward Hirsch’s critique of poetry in his book chapter, “Heartland” at the foot of the free-flowing coast where correspondences wash up on our own personal heartlands. We are inviting writers to send out their most intimate work, poems, essays, and now for the first time short stories that are teeming with a living hope, determined to reach its secret addressee.

“Imagine you have gone down to the shore and there, amidst the other debris—the seaweed and rotten wood, the crushed cans and dead fish— you find an unlikely looking bottle from the past. You bring it home and discover a message inside. This letter, so strange and disturbing, seems to have been making its way toward someone for a long time, and now that someone turns out to be you.”

You can read the heartland chapter in the book, “How to Read Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry” by Edward Hirsch.

Welcoming Guest Editor: Anna Lynch, MFA prose writer

Vessels of Light (Vasijas de Luz) es una revista literaria que existe para compartir escritos y arte que resaltan la belleza, pureza y luz que existen en el mundo,  a través de un lente cristiano. Ahora, con una visión global y multilingüística, Vessels of Light estará aceptando poesía en español para traducción al inglés, con publicación simultánea en ambos idiomas, al igual que poesía bilingüe (poemas en inglés con palabras/frases en español). 

Para más información enviar un correo a : vesselsoflightjournal@gmail.comdirigido a Rosa Lía Gilbert (asistente editorial y traductora al español). 

Translation:

Vessels of Light is a literary journal that exists to share writing and art that highlights, through a Christian lens, the beauty, purity, and light that exist in the world. Now, with a global and multilingual vision, Vessels of Light will be accepting poetry in Spanish to be translated into English for simultaneous publication in both languages. We will also be accepting bilingual poetry (primarily English poems with words/phrases in Spanish). 

For more information send an email to: 

vesselsoflightjournal@gmail.comaddressed to Rosa Lía Gilbert (editorial assistant and Spanish translator).

Please send us unpublished work that has not appeared in any publicly-accessible form previously, including online. This includes any work that is currently under contract or has been published on social media, personal websites, and/or Substack. While we value these platforms and your voice, we yearn for your fresh, rhema revelations of how Christ’s light is finding you!

We do not accept submissions of AI-generated work. As vessels of God made in the Imago Dei, our goal is to exemplify the authentic identity of the Creator within us as His created. We reserve the right to withdraw acceptances from any work found to be AI-generated, even if after publication.

Writers may submit from anywhere in the world, and we are excited by written works that engage culture through other  languages if the majority of the piece is in English. We are currently in the process of expanding to include Spanish poetry and translations of those works. Please stay tuned as our journal grows.

Please send your work to : vesselsoflightjournal@gmail.com

Include in the subject line: LAST NAME - GENRE - ISSUE

Attach a brief third-person bio and complimentary headshot (if you are comfortable sharing).

Include your writing as a Word Document, titled with your name and genre of writing. If you do not have Word, email us and we will receive your work in an alternative way.

If you are submitting both poetry and/or an essay, you may submit them in the same email, but we would appreciate you sending them in separate documents for viewing purposes.

We accept unsolicited, as well as simultaneous submissions. Please note in your submission if a piece is a simultaneous submission and notify us as soon as possible if it is accepted elsewhere so we may withdraw that piece.

For Poetry:

You may send up to 5 well revised poems at a time, per issue. Please begin each poem on a new page, in a standard font, such as Times New Roman, or Calibri. 

For Essays:

Please send us 1 or 2 well revised essays at a time between 500-1,000 words. While we prefer first person point of view, we are open to third or second person if the essay manages the style well. We are especially interested in devotional-style, reverent yet gritty, literary-minded, and Scripturally-centered pieces.

If you include Biblical references, please include the translation you are citing along with the book, chapter, and verse numbers. Additionally, we greatly appreciate you including the source of any other external quotations or references you use in your piece.

NOTE: At this time, we are looking for work that requires little to no edits and cannot accept work that needs major revision. Please send us your best work!

You maintain ownership of your work when you submit to our platform, whether it is chosen or not for publication. If published, our platform retains First Publication Rights and First Serial Rights of the work and retains archival rights to keep the work online. This means that you won't publish the poem anywhere else in the first three months following publication and that you grant us the right to keep your work online in our digital archive. After three months have passed, we ask that you credit us as the first publisher wherever your poem is featured in the future. Then, feel free to share your published work where you please.

At this time, we are a volunteer-based journal and are not a paying market. However, we have a vision for the future in becoming a print journal, and are eager to invite you into our digital community and do our best to honor and promote our writers!

Thank you for sharing your light, we are excited to read your work.

Keep Burning Brightly,

The Vessels of Light Team

If you have any background as a poet, essayist, editor, musician, or any other kind of artist, and are interested in joining the team, please email the founder and editor-in-chief, Alexis Leigh Ragan, to inquire about setting up a conversation to hear more about the heart behind the journal and what it would look like to potentially use your God-given gifts to serve the Kingdom vision on this passionate editorial team.

Email Alexis: Vesselsoflightjournal@gmail.com