Issues

✦ 2026 Cycle of The Hillsather Press

Upcoming Issue

Issue I — Inheritance
January 2026

Our debut issue explores what is passed down—blood, legacy, memories, and estates. These pages will hold stories of legacies that bind, poems that whisper of what lingers, and essays that interrogate the very idea of inheritance itself. The issue will also feature the winners of our inaugural short story contest.

Focus: What we carry—bloodlines, curses, traditions, legacies, relics.

Pre-orders will open in December 2025.

Spring Issue

Issue II — Thresholds
April 2026

Issue two asks us to consider what lingers in the doorway, tracing the uncertain grounds of passage and transformation. Within these pages you will find tales of thresholds crossed and borders transgressed—where the familiar slips into the unknown, and each step forward becomes a quiet haunting. Essays and poems will explore liminality in all its forms: spiritual, bodily, and architectural.

Focus: Doors, gates, passageways, rites of initiation, liminal states, physical growings

Pre-orders will open in March 2026.

Summer Issue

Issue III — The Body
July 2026

Our third issue turns inward, to the vessel that carries us. Flesh. Bone. Breath. The body is a text written in scars and in silences, both mortal and divine. Here you will encounter stories that unravel the sanctity and horror of the corporeal, poems that illuminate its frailty and beauty, and criticism that asks what it means to inhabit a form destined to decay.

Focus: Flesh, desire, decay, transformation, body horror.

Pre-orders will open in June 2026.

Autumn Issue

Issue IV — Silence
October 2026

Our final issue of the year listens to the spaces between words. Silence as absence, silence as power, silence as the echo of something unspeakable. The works gathered here meditate on what is withheld, concealed, or lost in the dark. Through story, poem, and essay, we will explore the unsettling weight of silence and the truths that emerge when the voice falters.

Focus: Absence, the unsaid, vanished voices, archives, ghosts.

Pre-orders will open in September 2026.

General submissions are open year round for all issues.

Note: Submissions that are not contest submissions are not required to follow the issue’s theme, but those that do are greatly appreciated and will receive priority consideration.