Jew­ish Book Coun­cil is pleased to announce this year’s open call for sub­mis­sions for fic­tion and poet­ry. The sub­mis­sion peri­od opens on Jan­u­ary 16, 2026 and clos­es at mid­night ET on Feb­ru­ary 16, 2026.

We encour­age authors to famil­iar­ize them­selves with work pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished by JBC before sub­mit­ting. Sub­mis­sions will be con­sid­ered for both Paper Brigade Shorts (print) and JBC’s dig­i­tal edi­to­r­i­al arm, PB Dai­ly. All authors will be paid for pub­lished work.

Work cre­at­ed with the help of machine-gen­er­at­ed text/​AI text out­puts is not eli­gi­ble. We do not con­sid­er trans­la­tions of work that have already been pub­lished in any language.

We read all sub­mis­sions care­ful­ly, which means it can take six months or some­times more for us to respond. We under­stand and accept simul­ta­ne­ous sub­mis­sions, but please noti­fy us imme­di­ate­ly if a piece is accept­ed for pub­li­ca­tion else­where. There is a read­ing fee of $3.00.

Jew­ish Book Coun­cil con­sid­ers orig­i­nal, unpub­lished short fiction.

Sto­ries should be between 1,500 and 7,000 words, and we encour­age authors to famil­iar­ize them­selves with fic­tion JBC has pub­lished before sub­mit­ting. Sub­mis­sions must be pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished, online or in print, and we only con­sid­er excerpts of longer works in progress if they can be read as stand-alone work. Please send only one story. 

Sub­mit through Sub­mit­table here.

Paper Brigade con­sid­ers orig­i­nal, unpub­lished poet­ry. Please sub­mit a max­i­mum of two poems. Poems will be con­sid­ered for both print and JBC’s online poet­ry series, Berru.

Sub­mit through Sub­mit­table here.

If you’re inter­est­ed in sub­mit­ting to our Wit­ness­ing series, send your piece or query to simona@​jewishbooks.​org. 

Our online Wit­ness­ing series shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the expe­ri­ences of Jew­ish writ­ers around the globe, in the after­math of Octo­ber 7th. Read the series here.