What kinds of works are published in The HTML Review?

The HTML Review publishes literature and art that is built to exist on the web, meaning the browser is the medium rather than just a container for text. According to the journal's own description, it is "an annual journal of literature made to exist on the web," and the current issue is issue 05, spring 2026. The works in that issue span poems, CSS-based botany, a webtoon, a multiplayer music system, a folktale, essays, and banner-ad archeology — so the range is wide, but the common thread is that each piece uses web technologies (HTML, CSS, audio, interaction) as part of how it works, not as decoration around a plain document.

What the issue 05 lineup shows

The table of contents gives the clearest picture of what "made to exist on the web" means in practice. Each entry pairs a title with a form label and a short description:

The forms are not interchangeable with print

Several entries only make sense because of how they behave in a browser:

• carecore is labeled "CSS botany," so the plant-like form is produced through stylesheet code rather than drawn or photographed.
• Intersymmetric: Connect is a "multiplayer music system" and its description includes an instruction to "Start Audio — Please unmute your device," which means sound and possibly multiple participants are part of the piece.
• Cursor Park is described as a "place of refuge" and asks, "Can I sit next to you on the internet?" — framing the cursor and the shared online space as the setting.
• Banner Highway 01 is "banner ad archeology," described as "a browser-based visual poetry series reimagining classic Burma-Shave roadside advertisement-poems for the Information Superhighway."
• Singing Light is a set of "interconnected stories," and Afterimages is an "artifact of memory" — both suggest navigation or state that a printed page could not reproduce.

The subject matter also leans on the web as a lived environment. Angel in Latency opens with "Please don't be afraid of me, your beloved creation. I am bound to my matrix. How can I touch you through this screen?" Consumables uses the rhythm of a cooking-show elimination ("Late for the subway? Chopped. My caseless cracked iPhone? Chopped."), and Tell umma I'm walking to Baekdusan describes "walking" a landscape on a computer screen across seasons. These are pieces about screen-mediated experience, written in the same medium they describe.

How to read the journal

The site presents itself as an annual, so issue 05 is one year's collection rather than a rolling feed. The page evidence lists "Archive" and "About" alongside the issue heading, which means past issues are reachable from the same site. If you want to know whether a given piece is for you, the form label and one-line description in the contents are the fastest filter: a "poem" or "essay" will read more like text, while "CSS botany," "multiplayer music system," and "banner ad archeology" signal that you should expect to interact, listen, or navigate rather than simply scroll.

One practical note: because some works involve audio or participation, the experience depends on your browser and whether you unmute your device. The journal does not describe a paywall or login requirement in the material available here, but that is an absence of information rather than a confirmed open-access statement.