Hello poets—I’m here with the 2026 update of the poetry publisher spreadsheet. This is the ninth year of putting this together, and I hope it helps you find a home for your book!

As I shared in December, this is my last update and the last newsletter for the Poetry Bulletin, because of recent health surprises and the need to reprioritize for that this year. I closed paid subscriptions in December, and all funds available for submission fee support have been redistributed to poets.

Thank you so much for all the kind replies to this news. Thank you to poets and publishers who shared experiences, asked questions, and passed along updates over the years.

And thank you to everyone who gave the project a boost with paid support. Thank you to a few anonymous poets who fed the submission fee support fund with extra contributions along the way—you always seemed to come through right when I got a burst of requests!

Together, we redistributed over $15,700 to more than 300 poets since the fee fund started in 2021. Using the average submission fee of $24 (in 2025), that’s more than 650 submissions . . . it’s been an honor to hear from so many poets and support so many books. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Some folks have asked how to say thanks or keep supporting the work . . . one of the best ways to keep the spirit of this project going is to keep opening doors: if you have the power to offer fee waivers or the funds to cover a fellow poet’s fees, thanks for doing and sharing what you can. If you’re judging a fee-based contest, ask the press to consider a fee-free period or a handful of waivers.

Where you find a gate, ask if it’s necessary. Ask how it changes the view. Ask who it protects and who it excludes.

If you’d like to support me directly, you can get my debut poetry book here from me or from Game Over Books. I also have a book called Surfacing, with short practices to give yourself feedback at the end of your writing sessions (available from me or Bookshop.org) . . . and maybe a long shot, but I’m looking for a publisher for my nonfiction book, about restlessness and impulse, written in the shapes of Lake Michigan . . . if you know of nonfiction deadlines or possibilities, I’d be grateful for any info!

For 2026, I’ve focused on the main tool of the Poetry Bulletin: the spreadsheet. This year, it has 183 reading periods and contest deadlines for full-length poetry books.

You can make your own copy of the spreadsheet, which makes it easier to filter out irrelevant deadlines and track your submissions. Check out the last column on the sheet for quick steps to make your own copy.

Go to the 2026 Publisher Spreadsheet

NEW for 2026, since I won’t be doing the monthly newsletter to highlight these: A second sheet (via a tab at the bottom of the screen) called “Accessible Opportunities.” This list of 88 deadlines is pulled out from the main sheet and includes ONLY deadlines that have:

• No submission fee

• Reduced fee options

• Sliding scale fees

• Fee waivers

Go to the 2026 Publisher Spreadsheet

Themes & Trends

Usually I also do a deep dive on the data, trends in submission fees, availability of fee waivers, and so on. That kind of analysis is its own big project each year, and unfortunately, it’s not in the cards for me now.

But there’s still plenty of relevant info to use from previous years, including notes on specific presses that are trying to make publishing more accessible and how they’re approaching it.

I gathered all the annual themes and trends posts in one place here.

There’s life in the archive—and it’s searchable!

An archive of Poetry Bulletin posts lives here. It goes back to when I moved the project to Substack in November 2022.

If you’re viewing the bulletin on the web (not in your inbox), you’ll find a search icon in the toolbar at the top of the page. It’s on the upper righthand side. This is great tool for using the archive to research opportunities, specific presses or contests, etc. It will point you to past mentions, changes at reading periods, or cautions that appeared in the Poetry Bulletin.

This is by no means an exhaustive reflection of publishers, but it can be a good starting point, especially if a press is new to you.

Again, thank you to everyone who supported the Poetry Bulletin. If I can share one closing thing, it’s just what I’ve felt more clear of over the years:

Every submission you make is an action, an ethic, you choose.

Where and how you submit makes your ethics a little more real.

What if we care about the poets we are submitting with, as much as the presses we are submitting to?

You get to decide if your submissions will be made in solidarity with poets who are marginalized and excluded. Researching a press and reading their guidelines isn’t just about following instructions. It’s a chance to ask: who is being welcomed here, and how? Who is included, and who is being ignored? Does that match my ethics or not?

It’s not nothing to choose with care . . . if you consider your art part of your resistance, it might be the most essential decision.

Thanks for the chance to be a part of your poetry practice over the years. Wishing all of us plenty of care & courage this year . . .

Emily Stoddard

(personal website, if you’d like to keep in touch)

Hi poets — writing you today with an important update about the Poetry Bulletin. Please check out the details before posting any questions!

For about eight years, I’ve kept this project going through a lot of personal ebbs and flows. If you’re also someone with chronic illness/chronic pain/a body of surprises, you likely know the challenge . . . momentum isn’t always easy to come by, and you have to be extra thoughtful about which projects you commit to for the long haul.

My hope has always been that if my body decided I couldn’t take good care of the Poetry Bulletin, I’d give ample notice to you all and gracefully transition the project to another caretaker. But the funny thing about this little vision is that it assumes my body would also give me ample notice . . . which has pretty much never happened? (But I guess this means I’m still optimistic somehow? Or foolish? I don’t know.)

So here’s the situation: a recent health surprise means I need to step back. The Poetry Bulletin will be on hiatus starting early 2026.

Please read through these essentials before posting any questions:

• I’m pausing paid subscriptions as of today, even though the project won’t be on hiatus until late January/early February 2026.

• As always, half of paid subscriptions go to the submission fee support fund. Funds received so far have been fully redistributed to poets, and submission fee support requests are now closed. Over $15,500 has been distributed to more than 300 poets to submit their poetry books and chapbooks. Your support has been incredible, and there are multiple books that found their publisher because of it—thank you!

• The other half of paid subscriptions have gone to the time and energy in caring for this project, completing research, commissioning care package posts, domain costs, etc.

• I still have work to do, even though paid support will be paused. I’m still committed to doing the big 2026 poetry publisher spreadsheet update. I know a lot of you rely on this every year, and I’ll just feel better if I can make it a kind of parting/closing gift. This is a line-by-line update of over 175 reading periods and contest deadlines, and it will likely take me longer this year. I’ll try to share it with you by the end of January 2026.
  

If you have questions or thoughts, please leave them as a comment on this post. That will help keep information public and transparent, save me the time of answering duplicate questions, etc.

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I still hope to transition the project to another caretaker, but it will take time. I want to create documents for the next person, and I want to be available for questions/interim support. Right now, I wouldn’t be able to show up well for that kind of support, which is a big reason why I opted for a hiatus, even though my dream was a seamless transition.

So even though the project will go quiet in early 2026, I’ll still be working (slowly) behind the scenes next year to connect with folks who might feel a pull to do this work.

Like I’ve said many times before, this project is a collective one. It’s ours, not mine. I’m just stewarding it . . . I really do think of it like an ecosystem and hope the next caretaker(s) feel the same. I don’t own the forests or the lakeshore or the rivers near my home here in Michigan. Likewise I don’t own the Poetry Bulletin. I don’t consider it “my” mailing list, although it’s obviously a big source of connection for me, and I’ll miss that. But the data and these resources belong to all of us. The work of calling for a fair publishing ecosystem is all of ours, in different ways. It’s important to me that the Poetry Bulletin transitions to someone who understands that and who feels excited to be the next steward.

Again, if you have questions or thoughts, please leave them as a comment on this post. Huge thanks in advance for your patience and understanding with this unexpected news. And good vibes/caring thoughts are definitely appreciated as I navigate a new season personally.

With gratitude,

Emily Stoddard

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing, leave a comment. Comments are preferred to email replies, as they get the information out to everyone more freely and quickly.

Care packages are bonus resources of the Poetry Bulletin—special thanks to paid subscribers who support the extra time it takes to create more tools like this!

These are a gathering of good things (specific ideas, practices, examples, tools) from fellow poets . . . shared freely, to help you keep going with your own work. Be sure to check out earlier care packages on writing query letters for poetry book submissions and making zines.

This is also a way to bring more voices into this project and pay poets for sharing a skill they have, a practice others could try, etc. Learn more about how to create a future care package for the Poetry Bulletin.

This care package is by Rachel Edelman, author of Dear Memphis. Many thanks to Rachel for sharing their process with all of us! Editor’s notes are by Emily Stoddard. If you have something to ask or share, please leave a comment so we can all trade tools and learn from each other.

Why make an audiobook?

Making an audiobook for my debut poetry collection Dear Memphis was less of an economic move and more of an accessibility one, for readers with visual impairments and other disabilities. I work as a teacher of adolescents, and I’ve seen audiobooks transform a frustrated reader into an excited one. Especially when neurodivergent readers encounter reading in modality they can comprehend, reading becomes a space of joy. I want everyone who wants to read Dear Memphis to be able to.

I use the word “read” intentionally. Critics “read” films, albums, and performances; a partygoer “reads” the room. Audiobooks are reading. Prior to mass literacy, all literature was orature, moving from voice into bodies, whether spoken or sung. Audiobooks carry a wisp of that tradition into the present.

But a poetry audiobook?

Excerpt: “Nocturne,” a poem from Dear Memphis

Once, poet Woogee Bae introduced me by saying, “If you’ve ever heard Rachel read her poems aloud, you know you’ve been given a gift—a soft whisper that leaves its traces in the air, the dirt, and that roots within you.” My poems speak and sing. They call toward the Hebrew and Aramaic prayers of Jewish liturgy, as well as the cadences and vowels of Southern American speech. I treasure every opportunity to put my lines into voice. And so, when Dear Memphis was picked up by River River Books, I was determined to make it available in audio form.

Originally published in Great River Review, as a runner-up in the 2021 Pink Poetry Prize

Alt-text, to be read in any order:

I wake in a pain without place.

A functional problem, my doctor said, though I heard her say, You can stand it.

No longer a singular injury: not my left lower back, not my knee-creaks.

We hide our pain from other women; we teach each other how.

At my hip, my cat gathers all of her paws, tail on the bridge of her nose, tucked in for the long dark.

Pain of motion, pain of stillness, pain of separation.

Last month E’s aunt fell and didn’t tell anyone.

Soon, the harvest will hunch my shoulders.

In these wild hips I’ll stand and pound the weeping cabbage into submergence.

My mother doesn’t trust my brine and boils hers instead.

I won’t choose to bring a child into this lifetime.

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Your Contract: Ask Your Publisher about Audiobooks

River River Books acquired Dear Memphis in its very first open reading period. When I got the publication offer, I immediately requested a conversation to discuss producing an audiobook. The editors didn’t have the capacity to produce an audiobook, so we talked about other options. They agreed to revise their standard contract so that I retained the audio rights.

If I were negotiating now, that’s the way I’d frame the request from the start: “Can I retain the audio rights?” It would’ve felt off if they wouldn’t produce an audiobook but also wouldn’t allow me to. With that, the production was in my hands.

Editor’s Note: Copyright

Be sure you’re clear on rights as you review a contract with a potential publisher. Don’t be afraid to ask questions! A good publisher will discuss these issues transparently. Your copyright is yours to keep and negotiate with, and any rights to various formats (print, ebooks, audiobooks) should be spelled out in your contract. FYI: Authors Guild includes a contract review as part of its membership fee.

The Cost & Process of Recording an Audiobook

with DIY resources if you don’t have a grant or other support to record

I wrote several grant applications to support audio, touring, and publicity for Dear Memphis, and one big one came through: the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture awarded me a CityArtist Grant of $8,000. As soon as I got the news, I hired a friend to refresh my website (thanks Bretty Rawson at Slow Blink Media!) and emailed the Jack Straw Cultural Center to book a recording session.

Jack Straw is a Seattle audio production organization that supports musicians, artists, and writers. Their office in the U District houses two recording studios and a gallery, and their engineers are well-versed in voice recording. They also work regularly with vocal coach Alyssa Keene, who they booked for my session. Since they’re a nonprofit with a mission to support artists, they charge significantly less than commercial studios.

The total for recording Dear Memphis was $350. Here’s how it broke down:

• Annual membership to Jack Straw: $50

• Four hours of studio recording and editing, at $50 per hour: $200

• Two hours of vocal coaching, at $50 per hour: $100

⟶ One more expense: Each format (e.g., paperback, audiobook) of your book needs its own ISBN. Rachel purchased one at cost through River River for $50. Here’s more on ISBNs for audiobooks.

The CityArtist Grant would cover expenses incurred in 2024 and 2025; Dear Memphis was set to publish in print on January 23, 2024. I wanted the audiobook to come out as close to the print publication date as possible, so I booked the recording for the first Saturday in January. It was a quick turnaround, but I don’t think I would have wanted more time. I’ve honed my reading skills for many years, and I didn’t feel the need to add any extra coaching or practice sessions, though other poets very well might.

One financial hiccup arose a week or so after recording: the City of Seattle’s ombudsman didn’t approve final contracts and begin disbursing money to CityArtist Grantees until mid-February. (Program manager Irene Gómez immediately informed me about the delay, and she was incredibly kind and communicative throughout the grant cycle.) I was on the hook for the recording cost until I got that check. For me, that meant moving some money from savings and repaying myself later. For others, that might’ve meant carrying the balance on a credit card.

Editor’s Note: Tools for DIY Audiobook Production

I haven’t attempted an audiobook yet, but I’ve recorded for online magazines, workshop videos, audio writing prompts, etc. These are some of my favorite DIY audio tools:

• Blue Yeti microphone (around $100 new, around $50-$75 used) — There are tons of microphone options now, but I find this one to be accessible *and* a good fit for more “traditional” recording where you’re delivering a script of audio (vs. conversational audio, like recording a vlog or podcast). Similar to a recording studio vibe, the Yeti’s size/design gives me the concrete sense of speaking into the mic, which helps me remember to enunciate, stand straighter, etc. I pair it with a pop filter (around $15 to $30).

• Descript, a recording and editing app (limited free plan, or $24 for one month for more recording hours). Descript is a tool to edit videos and audio as if they’re text. Upload or record in the app, and it will generate a transcript that you can then edit as if it’s a document. I do not love all the AI features they’re throwing into the tool now, but the core editing feature is still pretty cool.

• Curtains! Acoustics! Little touches make a difference for recording quality. I try to record in a small room, with the curtains closed and a cozy blanket on my chair. I wear something soft too, and not too many layers—if you tend to talk with your hands like I do, it’s a bummer to ruin a good take just because your clothes got in the way. And turn off any noisy fans or HVAC if you’re recording at home.

How to make all this happen, especially with limited money, time, or energy? One possibility is to pool funds and support with two or three other poets. Maybe host an audiobook recording day (or weekend) where you can troubleshoot together, trade skills, coach each other on how your readings sound, etc. Maybe it’s a few days spread out: one to record together, one to edit and prepare the audio files, and a final day to work on distribution and marketing. If a small group is open to doing this and sharing a process diary with the Poetry Bulletin, I would love that!

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In the Recording Studio

On recording day, I hydrated my vocal cords with honey water all morning and loosened up my body by walking the two miles to the studio. Audio engineer Tom Stiles welcomed me into the control room, and I shared the Dear Memphis e-galley with him and vocal coach Alyssa Keene.

I balanced my laptop (I don’t own a tablet) on a music stand. Alyssa adjusted the microphone, sound dampeners, and microphone stand until Tom said the sound was right. Then, Alyssa joined him behind the window. I was alone with my water bottle full of warm water and my poems.

Alyssa was the best director I could have imagined. Each time she spoke she gave just one or two clear, direct notes, never interrupting, always connecting what she saw on the page with the way I spoke the words aloud. She gave a bit of context, then introduced cues she’d use again and again. A little more gas at the end, she might say. I loved watching Tom and Alyssa react to my words as I read, and I felt so much respect for my work and dedication to creating a fully embodied recording.

We worked through the book beginning to end, taking one break in the middle. After the last poem, “Down this River,” Alyssa asked me to go back to the beginning and re-record the first ten poems or so. I didn’t know we’d do that ahead of time, and when we did, I was struck by how different the end of the book felt from the beginning. There was a grounded, determined assuredness in the final poems that balanced the opening’s searching anger. Re-recording, I found a surge of energy coursing out of my rage.

The whole session took about two hours. Tom sent me the tracked and mastered files about a week later.

Choosing a Distributor for Your Audiobook

Readers can purchase audiobooks from a wide variety of retailers. Rather than uploading an audiobook to each one individually, it’s much simpler for authors to upload their tracked mp3 files, with each poem appearing like a song on an album, to a distributor.

Audio engineer Tom checked and double-checked the technical requirements so that when he edited my recording, he could fit those specifications. Some distributors also required certain components (title, author, “the end,”) in the opening and closing credits, so it’s helpful to have some idea of distribution prior to recording.

I really wanted the audiobook to be available as soon as the paper book was, even though I was working full-time as a high school teacher, planning a cross-country book tour, and writing essays and interview responses to go live near my publication date.

So when it came to figuring out audiobook distribution, I called in help from my mom. Her patience for process and planning made this an ideal task for her. She researched the options and presented me with two distributors: Findaway Voices (which had just been acquired by Spotify, and is now Spotify for Authors) and Author’s Republic.

Another Distribution Option: The Question of Amazon
When we started on a few of the extra steps required by Amazon for ACX (Audible) distribution, they asked for a Kindle-enabled ebook link, which I did not and would not have. It didn’t feel worth it to seek out some back way to offer my book via Jeff Bezos, so Dear Memphis isn’t available on Audible.

Editor’s Note: Which distributor for which platforms?

As of August 2025, Spotify has moved forward with Spotify for Authors, and Findaway Voices is now an independent company called Voices by INaudio.

So if you want distribution on just Spotify, Spotify for Authors is one path.

If you want distribution elsewhere (outside Spotify), then Voices by INaudio is one option, along with Author’s Republic. Distributors like these reach platforms such as Apple and Libro.fm—here’s a list of platforms you can reach through Author’s Republic, for example.

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Adapting Your Cover for an Audiobook

Audiobook covers are square icons, and Dear Memphis is a 6 x 8 rectangle. After River River Books confirmed that I could adapt the cover that Alban Fisher designed, I hired my friend Gabrielle Bates to do so. I love how Gabby made the wood paneling look even glitchier, like a shifted timeline or a faulted rock formation, while still keeping the white script as a high-contrast focal point in thumbnail form.

Marketing Your Audiobook

The audiobook was approved by the quality checking process within a week or so of uploading it. After that, I posted its availability on socials, and I added links to it on my email signature and website.

Most people get the audiobook through their libraries or from Libro.FM. If I had more capacity, I would have loved to reach out to media sources and pitched a list of great poetry audiobooks, including my own. If you, reader, were to do that and include Dear Memphis, I’d be touched.

Setting Your Price

When I was setting the audiobook’s retail price, Findaway Voices suggested prices around $5.00, consistent with other poetry titles. I remember thinking Wow, I might actually make money on this. That has not turned out to be true.

Every few months I get royalty reports for laughable sums: $2.16, $2.52, $0.19, $0.03, $0.19. In total, I’ve earned $5.44 from audiobook sales. I would like to know more about why these sums are so small, but every time I try to discern the details, I get mired in terms of service I cannot understand. I earn single cents from Spotify and a dollar or so for each library that purchases it. I’m glad I wasn’t counting on any income.

The more fruitful payout has been the audiobook’s worldwide accessibility. Long before paper copies landed with my cousins in Kuala Lumpur or my collaborator in Berlin, my dear ones could listen to Dear Memphis.

As my debut nears 18 months in the world, I hope it will continue to migrate from ear to ear and hand to hand.

Get a copy of Dear Memphis

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Hi poets — a number of you reached out to say you liked the seasonal format this summer (three months in one bulletin, instead of one month at a time), because it made it easier to plan ahead for deadlines. So I’m trying the seasonal approach again and might just keep this format going forward. I hope it’s helpful, and I think it will work better as I release more care packages, to avoid overwhelming your inbox.

And there is a new care package coming out soon, on making an audiobook for your poetry collection. If you’re not familiar, care packages are special posts on targeted topics or practical skills for poets, like this one on zines and this one on query letters. They’re a free resource for everyone, made possible by paid supporters of the Poetry Bulletin.

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Are you submitting a full-length poetry book or poetry chapbook now? If submission fees are a barrier for you, check out the fee fund we’ve got going. Some funds are available at the moment, and I’m redistributing them as quickly as I can. We’ve gotten over $14,000 out to poets since 2021, with about 600 submissions supported in that time (going by the average submission fee). As always, try to reach out at least two weeks before your deadline—it’s just me responding to folks, and sometimes it takes a little while to get back to everyone.

Finally, it’s Refaat’s birthday. He should still be here, along with so many, many others. You could pick up his book through the Workshops4Gaza bookstore or sign up for a workshop like this one with Maya Salameh on October 4 to benefit the Sameer Project. You can join the boycott efforts. What I really wish is that we could all be picking strawberries together instead.

emily

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Creative Resources & Tools for Practice

• Nov 14 — Firecracker Awards at CLMP, for books and magazines published by independent publishers in 2025

• I appreciated the mix of examples in this post on sustainable book design and typesetting (i.e., how to save pages/ink through design choices). It’s also a bit of a primer on the design process, which might be helpful if you’re new to this and curious what your publisher has to consider when preparing your book for print.

• “Revision always makes use of edits. But not all edits are revisions.” — on revision strategies (for prose, but still insight here for poetry too)

• Authors Guild recently shared an update on the Anthropic settlement: “On September 5, 2025, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle claims that it downloaded pirated books to train its AI systems—the largest U.S. copyright settlement in history.” (fwiw, if you’re trying to keep up with AI developments and what they mean for writers, you may want to join Authors Guild. Their legal services for members also include contract reviews, which I’ve found helpful.)

• Poetic Wednesdays, an initiative supporting Nigerian poets, hosted KAPFEST (Kano International Poetry Festival) this month. Event videos are starting to pop up on Instagram and elsewhere. I’d like to highlight more festivals/reading opportunities/etc. like this, especially outside the United States, in the bulletin, so please say hello and share links if you’re part of one.

• ArtsMidwest (here in the U.S.) is offering a webinar series on emergency preparedness for artists and arts organizations. Tomorrow, they’re offering one for artists on rebounding from disaster—registration is free and open here. All the sessions are also recorded and available freely here.

Upcoming Deadlines for Poetry Manuscripts

Between now and the end of November, there are over 15 reading periods with presses that do not exclude poets based on their ability to pay. They either charge no submission fee, or if they charge a fee, they offer fee waivers or support of some kind.1

Last I checked, two of these have committed to PACBI: Nightboat Books and Free Lines Press

SEPTEMBER

• Sept 30 — Philip Levine Prize for Poetry — waivers available by emailing bsaito@mail.fresnostate.edu

OCTOBER

• Oct 1— Changes Press Book Prize (the most accessible + generous prize on the full list of 175+ reading periods for poetry books)

• Oct 11 — The Journal / Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize — waivers available (email prize@thejournalmag.org) + reduced for BIPOC

• Oct 15 — Poetic Justice Institute Book Prizes — fee-free for BIPOC

• Oct 31 — University of Chicago Phoenix Poets — no fee

• Oct 31 — Persea Books First Book Prize — waivers available by emailing poetry@perseabooks.com

NOVEMBER

• Nov 15 — Perugia Press Prize — tiered fees, with a reduced fee available + fee-free for BIPOC

• Nov 15 — Nightboat Books Poetry Prize — committed to PACBI, 25 fee waivers available (waiver guidelines here, with kudos to Nightboat for the clarity on the number of waivers and clear process for how they work)

• Nov 30 — Lamar University Open Reading Period — no fee

ONGOING (no stated deadline) + NO FEE

• Better than Starbucks Publications

• Prolific Pulse

• Free Lines Press — committed to PACBI

• Fernwood Press

• Sea Crow Press

• Great Place Books

• Deep Vellum

• Wayfarer Books

Why PACBI?

If you’re submitting and writing in solidarity with those facing genocide, PACBI is one clear way to find publishers who are in the work too. Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza have lists of presses committed to PACBI. We know boycotting and protesting works—check out the recent example of the Giller Prize. Don’t be afraid to ask a potential publisher where they stand before you trust them with your work.

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The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing or want to share a resource, leave a comment. Comments are preferred to email replies when possible, as they get the information out to everyone more freely and quickly.

Hi poets — I’m trying something new and doing a June/July/August bulletin, to group the (northern hemisphere) summer months together. I hope this is more helpful for your planning, since the rhythm of deadlines, child care situations, revision energy, etc. can vary so much during this season.

These months are also, it seems, likely to hold more uncertainty and grief . . . it feels like a(nother) moment to return to Fargo Tbakhi’s “Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide” and George Abraham’s “Toward an Apocalypse of Letters.”

It helps me to remember that I don’t always have to find new words or new questions to keep meeting the moment. Sometimes a frantic-ness of feeling is a sign that I’m anxious for some new idea or new clarity, when what I really need is to remember / return to what’s already true. Like returning to Lake Michigan (photo above) to right-size myself when things get loud.

The acceleration of violence does not worry about trying on new names. It doesn’t worry about being original. Many days it seems to get its power from being one of the oldest stories. It counts on someone saying, “Oh but, it’s complicated. Always has been.” For some of us, that’s an inheritance we’re wrestling with—the way my ancestors1 wrote about their purpose does not sound all that different from the language of settlers and genocide-enablers now.

So I hope there’s also a counterweight-power in remembering / reaffirming what else is already with us, and returning to clarity like Fargo’s and George’s. To find out if or how our writing practice is still changing in response to the world. To share with another person or in the next writing workshop, like I’m sharing here with you, one more time. To repeat the possibilities, so it’s clear that our love of liberation is / can be / will be just as persistent as some people’s love of occupation.

I know this is just one way to meet the moment. Just wanted to pass it along in case you’re feeling like I am and need a little re-planting or re-orienting now . . . sending love and thanks to the poets who keep sharing the many ways through —

emily

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Submission Fee Support

re: the submission fee support fund — I’m a little behind on responses as I balance some big personal deadlines with this project. Those are the emails I’m heading to next after hitting send on this bulletin. As always, it helps a ton if you can reach out about your deadlines at least a week (ideally two) in advance.

Right now there’s enough money to cover submissions for two or three poets’ books. Here’s how to get support—please note the update for 2025!

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Creative Resources & Possibilities

• Workshops4Gaza is accepting proposals for new workshops and reading groups.
  

• Appreciated this piece that weaves together poetry-making and website-making, and how different mediums shape the process, by Omayeli Arenyeka: “What is a website good for?” Thinking a bit on this led me back to an old favorite, Tiana Clark’s “Meditations on the Line.”
  

• Boosting again for poets in Australia: check out and their regular posts on upcoming events—the new June edition has 170+ events, sorted by different locations and including some virtual options.
  

• Debutiful is open to books from emerging and debut authors for coverage on its site. They suggest pitching your book at least three months before its release date. Get more details (visual slides) here on Instagram, or check out their full submissions page. They cover about 12 poetry books annually.
  

• continues to share a ton of great resources, upcoming events, and deadlines on Crip News.
  

• Due June 27 — Possible Worlds is hosting a summer micro publishing residency in Ottawa, Ontario. This is a one-week opportunity (multiple dates to choose from), and they’ll select two people to participate.
  

• Due June 30 — Seventh Wave’s virtual group program, Narrative Shifts, is accepting applications to its fall 2025 residency. It’s free to apply, and they offer two fully-funded seats in the program.
  

• Due July 15 — Sundress Publications is offering a microgrant and one-week residency for trans writers.
  

• Due September 1 — is giving $1,000 (each) to five different literary magazines as part of a new Lit Mag Incubator Program. No fee to apply for the program, and they only require two things: you factor in payment for your editors and writers and you can’t rely solely on contests or submission fees for revenue.

Upcoming Deadlines for Poetry Manuscripts

Between now and the end of August, there are over 15 reading periods with presses that do not exclude poets based on their ability to pay. They either charge no submission fee, or if they charge a fee, they offer fee waivers or support of some kind.2

Last I checked, three of these have committed to PACBI: River River Books, Diode Editions, Inverted Syntax

JUNE

• June 30 — Barrow Street Book Contest — fee discounts available upon request

• June 30 — Autumn House Poetry Contest — already reached their cap on fee waivers, but I still wanted to include this for anyone who can afford fees and is prioritizing publishers who practice fee accessibility

• June 30 — Four Way Books Open Reading Period — fee waivers available

• June 30 — Unicorn Press Open Reading Period — no reading fee

• June 30 — River River Books — committed to PACBI and pay what you can, including fee-free ($10 is their suggested fee if you’re able to pay)

• June 30 — Trio House Press Open Reading Period — fee waived for writers with income less than $50,000 annually

• June 30 — Black Lawrence Press Open Reading Period — fee waivers available by emailing: editors@blacklawrencepress.com

• June 30 — Early bird discount period for Black Lawrence Press’ St. Lawrence Book Award

JULY

• July 15 — Word Works Tenth Gate Prize (mid-career poets) — fee waivers available by emailing: editor@wordworksbooks.org

• July 15 — Diode Editions Book Contest — fee waivers available, committed to PACBI

AUGUST

• Aug 1 — Cornerstone Press - Portage Poetry Series — no reading fee

• Aug 15 — Futurepoem Other Futures Award — sliding scale fees, with waivers available

• Aug 16 — Inverted Syntax Tabbikha Prize for Poetry (for SWANA diaspora) — $10 reduced fee available, committed to PACBI

• Aug 16 — Inverted Syntax Aggrey Prize (for BIPOC poets) — $10 reduced fee available, committed to PACBI

• Aug 16 — Inverted Syntax Sublingua Prize for Poetry (for female-identifying) — $10 reduced fee available, committed to PACBI

• Aug 16 — Omnidawn Open Poetry Book Contest — fee waivers available by emailing: free.entry@omnidawn.com

• Aug 31 — Sundress Publications Open Reading Period — waivers for all BIPOC writers

Why PACBI?

If you’re submitting and writing in solidarity with those facing genocide, PACBI is one clear way to find publishers who are in the work too. Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza have lists of presses committed to PACBI. We know boycotting and protesting works—check out the recent example of the Giller Prize. Don’t be afraid to ask a potential publisher where they stand before you trust them with your work.

Subscribe now

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing or want to share a resource, leave a comment. Comments are preferred to email replies when possible, as they get the information out to everyone more freely and quickly.

Hi poets — Thanks for the generous responses to last month’s call for care package ideas! I’ve filled the spots that were available, so please stay tuned for a couple new care packages (and if time/energy/money allow, more openings for your ideas and pitches).

There’s a little money in the submission fee support fund right now, and I’d like to get it on its way to poets who could use the boost. Here’s how to get support—please note the update for 2025.

emily

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Creative Resources & Possibilities

• Tala Khanmalek is leading a flash prose workshop with Workshops4Gaza on May 25. I thought folks here might be interested, since prose poetry and flash prose are good friends. Workshops4Gaza is also still accepting proposals for new workshops and reading groups.
  

• More on zines! This time: on using them in undergrad teaching. Pair with SG Huerta’s care package on zines, or any of the recent posts by over at papereaters. For more zine how-to inspiration and zine reviews, two personal favorites are brattyxbre and cat moth crow. I’m also open to trades on my new zine, There is No A.I. in Dreams.
  

• For poets in Australia, check out and their regular posts on upcoming events—the May edition has 170+ events, sorted by different locations and including some virtual options.
  

• If you’re looking for secure alternatives to Google / Gmail / Google Workspace: I recently switched to Proton, mostly for their mail features, but they also have a calendar feature that’s been seamless to switch to, plus a Drive feature that’s (kind of) like Google Drive. The process was a little involved, but they have an “easy import” tool that helps simplify things. If folks are interested in more sharing on this or if you have other tools you like, drop a comment.

Upcoming Deadlines for Poetry Manuscripts

Between now and the end of June, there are nine reading periods with presses that do not exclude poets based on their ability to pay. They either charge no submission fee, or if they charge a fee, they offer fee waivers or support of some kind.1

Last I checked, three of these have committed to PACBI: Game Over Books, Broken Sleep Books, and River River Books.

• May 31 — Game Over Books — no reading fee, committed to PACBI (FYI: This is my publisher and I had a great experience releasing my debut with them.)

• May 31 — Broken Sleep Books — no reading fee, committed to PACBI

• June 1 — Green Writer Press Open Reading Period — no reading fee

• June 30 — Barrow Street Book Contest — fee discounts available upon request (FYI: Barrow Street charges $28 and their website doesn’t say what the fee discount is, so it’s unclear how accessible this reading period is for poets who can’t afford fees.)

• June 30 — Autumn House Poetry Contest — already reached their cap on fee waivers, but I still wanted to include this for anyone who can afford fees and is prioritizing publishers who practice fee accessibility

• June 30 — Four Way Books Open Reading Period — fee waivers available

• June 30 — Unicorn Press Open Reading Period — no reading fee

• June 30 — River River Books — committed to PACBI and pay what you can, including fee-free ($10 is their suggested fee if you’re able to pay)

• June 30 — Trio House Press Open Reading Period — fee waived for writers with income less than $50,000 annually

Why PACBI?

If you’re submitting and writing in solidarity with those facing genocide, PACBI is one clear way to find publishers who are in the work too. Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza have lists of presses committed to PACBI. We know boycotting and protesting works—check out the recent example of the Giller Prize. Don’t be afraid to ask a potential publisher where they stand before you trust them with your work.

Subscribe now

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing or want to share a resource, leave a comment. Comments are preferred to email replies when possible, as they get the information out to everyone more freely and quickly.

Hi poets — Last week I shared the newest care package, a zine by . Today I’m sharing more about this part of the Poetry Bulletin, with a wish list for future posts. And good news: this is a paid opportunity that I can finally start offering to more folks!

The essentials . . . care packages at the Poetry Bulletin:

• bring together tangible ideas, practices, examples, or tools from fellow poets.

• are not philosophical essays or abstract-process-craft-think-pieces.

• share openly and refuse the gatekeeping of knowledge and resources in publishing. For example, and I shared actual query letters in the first care package, hopefully giving other poets an easier place to begin.

• resist professionalization, prestige, and the hierarchy of who gets considered an “expert” . . . homegrown knowledge, weird experiments, DIY approaches, publishing outside traditional paths, voices/practices/methods that don’t fit neatly inside institutions, and the like are especially welcomed/needed/loved here.

Care packages are also a way to pay poets for their labor . . . so that the care is mutual, reciprocal.

I didn’t want this to be a “small token of appreciation” kind of payment. I’d rather publish fewer of these and pay poets more. I also don’t have the time/energy/spoons to sift through hundreds of pitches and edit dozens of these in a year. I’ll need to strike a balance with this work, especially given the ebb and flow of paid subscriptions (which help make this possible).

So here’s where we’re at:

• I’m excited to share that the Poetry Bulletin is paying $150 to poets who create a care package. That’s for posts created by one writer.

• For collaborative care packages, where multiple poets contribute, the project can pay $50 to each poet.

Right now, we’re in a good spot to get two more care packages on the books for 2025. This is the start of a wish list:

• Care packages that play with forms . . . a zine? a video? audio? a comic? It doesn’t always have to be written content. It doesn’t have to feel like an essay. What form of sharing is most accessible for you? What form of sharing is best for the practice you’re covering? I can help with idea-shaping, so don’t be shy about trying something new.
  

• A care package on creating an audiobook for your poetry book. The real nuts and bolts on making your book more accessible in this format. Transparent details on how much it costs (with DIY options), how to make and release an audiobook, what labor and learning curve is involved, etc.
  

• A care package on archive-tending/death-and-transition-care for your body of work as a writer . . . I have tools and practices here, and this could potentially be a good collaborative care package.

Leave a comment

Leave a comment to add to the wish list or share feedback. It would mean a lot if folks comment here instead of emailing me, so we can share the work of listening and dream in the open on this!

Share your interest in creating or contributing to a care package by emailing me. NO PR ROBOT PITCHES PLEASE and NO BOOK PROMOS—only human poets with beating hearts and a desire to make something thoughtful. (I’m not anti-PR. I just want to be clear that this is not that.)

Upcoming Deadlines for Poetry Manuscripts

Between now and the end of May, there are eight reading periods with presses that do not exclude poets based on their ability to pay. As in: they either charge no submission fee, or if they charge a fee, they offer fee waivers or support.1

Last I checked, two of these have committed to PACBI: Game Over Books and Broken Sleep Books.

• TODAY! April 15 — Vanderbilt University Literary Prize — fee waivers available, capped at 25.

• April 30 — Green Bottle Press — no reading fee

• April 30 — Texas Review Press — no reading fee

• April 30 — Lamar University Press — no reading fee

• April 30 — Ghost Peach Prize in Poetry — fee waivers available

• April 30 — Word Works Hilary Tham Capital Collection (nominations only) — fee waivers available

• May 31 — Game Over Books — no reading fee, committed to PACBI (FYI: This is my publisher and I had a great experience releasing my debut with them.)

• May 31 — Broken Sleep Books — no reading fee, committed to PACBI

Why PACBI?

If you’re submitting and writing in solidarity with those facing genocide, PACBI is one clear way to find publishers who are in the work too. Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza have lists of presses committed to PACBI. We know boycotting and protesting works—check out the recent example of the Giller Prize. Don’t be afraid to ask a potential publisher where they stand before you trust them with your work.

Subscribe now

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing or want to share a resource, leave a comment. Comments are preferred to email replies when possible, as they get the information out to everyone more freely and quickly.

The first care package, on how to write a query letter for poetry book submissions, has been a crowd favorite, so I hope to do more with this format in 2025.

Care packages are a gathering of good things (specific ideas, practices, examples, tools) from fellow poets . . . shared freely, to help you keep going with your own work.

This is also a way to bring more voices into this project and pay poets for sharing a skill they have, a practice others could try, etc. I’ll share more on that in the April bulletin.

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This care package is about: zines!

Or, what if we imagine otherwise/other ways?

Creating access to publishing is a big part of why the Poetry Bulletin exists, but sometimes I wonder if by focusing so much on traditional submission opportunities, I inadvertently add to the pressure that traditional publishing is the only legitimate, meaningful way to get your writing out there.

And that’s simply not true. Or at least it’s not true for me and why I do this work with all of you. There are so many ways to share your work. Meaningful, legitimate, artful, creative, honest ways.

When I look at artists and writers I respect, they’re working in many ways and forms, listening to what’s true to their voice and best for each project. Listening to what the times call for. The curiosity of how / when / where / why to publish or share their work is woven into the creative process itself. It’s part of the listening. It’s not just a hurdle to clear after the work is “finished.” And it’s not just about begging for a blessing of the work from the powers-that-be.

I hope the bulletin can make more space for this kind of dreaming—

What other forms are poets experimenting with to share their work, and why?

What forms give you more creative control over the process, or more access to publish at all, or more freedom to play with the distance between writing and releasing your work?

(What if we play with time, cycles, and urgency as our collaborators . . . instead of uncontrollable elements in a long submissions process? What do we lose when traditional publishing deadlines set the pace and feedback loops for our work?)

When I imagined where we might start with that kind of dreaming, zines were top of mind. And my next thought was of , whose great newsletter trans poetica often includes zines and links or DIY resources made in the spirit of zines.

I asked SG if they would be open to sharing from their practice, and they created this care package—in the form of a zine, naturally—especially for you all.

I hope this can be the first of more posts like this. Big thanks to SG for showing the way here!

WHY I ZINE (& WHY YOU SHOULD TOO)

A zine for fellow poets, made for the Poetry Bulletin by

Alt text for each page is shared below. Check out the video at the top of the post for how to fold the print version of the zine.

Download the zine (PDF for printing)

Download the zine (for screen viewing)

Alt Text

Page 1 Cover page

Why I Zine & Why You Should Too

SG Huerta | Feb ‘25

[Zine is stylized in all capital letters, written with thin felt-tip green and pink markers. The cover features a sparkly silver star sticker]

Page 2

Fill in the blanks! [written on a pink coffee-stained sticky note]

Zines are a way to share [blank]

(words/art/poetry/all of the above & then some)

in a/an [blank] way.

(diy/radical/accessible/all of the above y más)

They can be as [blank] as you want.

(wordy/minimal/messy/serious/frequent/goofy/political/fancy/niche/cringe/…)

Page 3

My first zine I handed out, IF YOU WANT TO ASK A TRANS PERSON SOMETHING, helped me address microaggressions I face(d) as a trans Chicano, through poems, lists, places to send $$, & actual tips for well meaning allies.

[The same sparkly silver star sticker from the cover is in the corner of the page]

Pages 4 and 5 Centerfold

I fell in love with poetry as a kid. [overlapping with the same coffee-stained sticky note from the cover]

[cut up pieces of paper of the same green and black line doodles glued next to each other]

When ^(racist, ableist, queerphobic) academia burnt me out, I turned to poetry collages & zinemaking.

[Collage of star-shaped stickers of various colors and sizes, including the silver sparkly star from the cover. Small lines of washi tape are coming out of the side of the big silver star and are interspersed with the following collage made of scraps of paper and writing]

A helping hand / still closed / you need it / Poet / … alive

Page 6

Zines are how my bipolar-queer-Chicano mindsoul best creates & connects, online & offline

[arrow] @ zine fests, political events, workshops, readings, etc etc etc

[silver outline of small stars]

Page 7

Zines can be about & made with anything [Two arrows point to the word “anything,” written bigger than the rest of the words]

Fill in your zine ideas below: [blank cloud drawing]

Page 8 Back cover

Read Trans Poets [written inside of a Sun drawing]

Say Hola: sghuertawriting.com

Más Free Zines: transpoetica.itch.io

Was this care package helpful? Do you like this format? Drop a comment with your thoughts—especially if you have resources or examples of your own zines to share.

Hi poets — first, fellow U.S. poets, please join me in reaching out to your Congress people and demanding the release of Mahmoud Khalil. If you want a starting point, tools like Five Calls can help… imperfect action, persistent action, refusal-to-go-quietly action, together-action is all we have. Don’t assume a D or R next to your senator’s name means they’ve got your back and don’t need a call. I’ve got Sen. Peters (D) and Sen. Slotkin (D) here in Michigan and do not feel represented by or safe in their silence on this.

And next, I’m hoping this will be a little good news in these bad news days… thanks to folks supporting the Poetry Bulletin with paid subscriptions, the submission fee fund can reach more poets than usual this spring.

Until now, you’ve been able to get support for three submissions, and that was a lifetime maximum. A “one and done” kind of support.

Going forward, as long as there’s still support from paid subscriptions to back it, I’m changing the limit to be a max of three submissions, per poet, per year.

So if you received support in other years, you can get support again this year. How this works:

• Fee support is confidential.

• It covers a max of three submissions per poet, per year, as funds are available.

• Open to poets submitting poetry CHAPBOOKS or FULL-LENGTH poetry collections.

• Try to email at least one week before your deadline. My inbox is a loud place and I struggle to keep up, so I can’t help with last-minute deadlines.

• I can get you funds via Paypal, and only to your personal Paypal account. (Last month’s bulletin shares more about why that is.)

• Just drop me an email with where you’re submitting and the fees.
  

Subscribe now

Thank you—

As of today 157 people support this work with paid subscriptions, and the project reaches 5,500 poets.

Thank you to everyone who chips in, passes these tools along to poets who need them, shares updates on publishers, mentions the project in interviews, chats with me about collaboration, and more… thank you to everyone moving in/for/with a sense of community now.

💚

Emily

(p.s. personal update) The past year and a half-ish has been tricky for my own writing, with the tough things happening in my family and in communities like this one… I’ve found poetry hard to come by. So I started trying other forms to keep my hands moving, and it’s led to a mix of language and linocut printmaking. It’s kind of been my secret art that’s become a core practice, and I’m ready (mostly ready?) to start sharing it now.

National Poetry Pay-to-Play Series

The National Poetry Series has a deadline in March and is the least accessible publishing opportunity out of the 170+ deadlines this project tracks.

I had an exchange with them last year about fee accessibility and waivers, and they said they won’t change course unless they see a decrease in submissions.

If you want to be in solidarity with poets who are excluded from publishing, please consider if you really want to share your work and submission fees with the National Poetry Series this year. If you opt out, you can drop them an email here to let them know why you’ve withheld your submission.

a little inspiration

• on Nikki Giovanni and poetry albums: “I come from an era where poets were more likely to hand you a burned CD instead of a chapbook after the show. A small stack of paper and plastic sleeved treasures still sits nestled next to my jewel-cased copy of De La Soul’s ‘Buhloone Mindstate’ (did someone say Ego Trippin?). Yet, it wasn’t until I listened to Nikki Giovanni’s 1971 album that I realized just how great a poetry album could be.”

• More potential for poetry in other forms: free comics workshops about connection and grief . . . we’ve got new sharing on the way here at the Bulletin (kind of like this earlier care package on query letters) about getting your poetry out there beyond the traditional container of a book, and I’d love to share more along these lines this year. Drop a comment if you have resources or inspiration to share!

• and are definitely worth a follow if you’re learning about surveillance culture and thinking about your online footprint.

Upcoming Deadlines for Poetry Manuscripts

Between now and mid-April, there are seven reading periods with presses that do not exclude poets based on their ability to pay. As in: they either charge no submission fee, or if they charge a fee, they offer fee waivers or support.1

Note that last I checked, none of these have committed to PACBI.

• March 14 — Carcanet Books — free submissions

• March 15 — Word Works Washington Prize — fee waivers available by emailing: editor@wordworksbooks.org (FYI: limited waivers are available and may already have been used up, since this deadline was also shared last month)

• March 31 — Clash Books — free submissions

• March 31 — Airlie Prize — fees waived for BIPOC writers

• March 31 — Steel Toe Books — fee waivers available, request guidelines by messaging the publishers on social media (but also a word of caution on this press)

• March 31 — Four Ways Book Levis Prize — I’m mentioning this one, but their website says the fee waiver limit has been met.

• April 15 — Vanderbilt University Literary Prize — fee waivers available, capped at 25.

Why PACBI?

If you’re submitting and writing in solidarity with those facing genocide, PACBI is one clear way to find publishers who are in the work too. Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza have lists of presses committed to PACBI. We know boycotting and protesting works—check out the recent example of the Giller Prize. Don’t be afraid to ask a potential publisher where they stand before you trust them with your work.

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing or want to share a resource, leave a comment. Comments are preferred to email replies when possible, as they get the information out to everyone more freely and quickly.

Hi poets — this is a quick version of the usual monthly post, since January and February have already been busy with the annual publisher update and the special update on reading periods for first books.

Part three of the annual update, coming soon: A breakdown of compensation across the 170+ reading periods. A massive thank you to everyone who is part of this work with a paid subscription. You make this research possible, and half of your paid support goes to poets who need a boost to cover submission fees.

Subscribe now

Fee support: Are you submitting a book in 2025?

Requests for submission fee support are now open again:

• Fee support is confidential.

• It covers a max of three submissions per poet, as funds are available.

• Open to poets submitting poetry CHAPBOOKS or FULL-LENGTH poetry collections.

• Try to email at least one week before your deadline. My inbox is a loud place and I struggle to keep up, so I can’t help with last-minute deadlines.

• Please don’t be shy if you could use a boost to get your book out there! Just drop me an email with where you’re submitting and the fees.

Important! How I get the funds to you—

I can get you funds via Paypal, and only to your personal Paypal account. I know there are limitations in certain countries, and sometimes a “go-between” is used (i.e., a friend takes the funds on your behalf). This isn’t an option for this project now.

In the past year, there have been issues with people impersonating poets, and Paypal has flagged my account on a handful of transactions. This has been time-consuming to deal with and could put all of the submission support at risk… for the sake of this project and my own work, I can’t afford to get blocked by Paypal, so I’ve had to tighten up some of the process here.

With all of this work, I’m doing the best I can, with the resources we’ve got, as things happen… thanks for understanding.

Waive-to-play: An update on publisher eligibility

There will be no more free advertising in these monthly posts for publishers excluding the poets who can’t pay to play.

The monthly bulletin reaches over 5,000 subscribers and generates views well beyond that (almost 13,000 in the past 30 days). This project consistently sends traffic to presses and submission opportunities—very likely giving a nice bump to submissions made and submission fees paid.

So, in the spirit of those presses who say they depend on exclusionary submission practices to survive, it’s time to adjust the cost of admission to the Poetry Bulletin.

These monthly updates are now a waive-to-play opportunity. If a press wants to be read by this audience, they can offer zero-fee reading periods, fee waivers for poets who need them, or other creative options, as shared in this newsletter many times.

Upcoming Deadlines for Poetry Manuscripts

Between now and early March, there are three reading periods with presses that do not exclude poets based on their ability to pay. As in: they either charge no submission fee, or if they charge a fee, they offer fee waivers or support.

Note that last I checked, none of these have committed to PACBI.

• Feb 23 — Sarabande Books - Kathryn A. Morton Prize — fee waivers available by emailing: info@sarabandebooks.org

• Feb 28 — Omnidawn First + Second book contest — fee waivers available by emailing: free.entry@omnidawn.com

• March 15 — Word Works Washington Prize — fee waivers available by emailing: editor@wordworksbooks.org

Why PACBI?

If you’re submitting and writing in solidarity with those facing genocide, PACBI is one clear way to find publishers who are in the work too. Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza have lists of presses committed to PACBI. We know boycotting and protesting works—check out the recent example of the Giller Prize. Don’t be afraid to ask a potential publisher where they stand before you trust them with your work.

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing or want to share a resource, leave a comment. Comments are preferred to email replies when possible, as they get the information out to everyone more freely and quickly.

That’s a photo of my grandpa, Papa to me. It’s a moment from an AFL-CIO meeting decades ago. I wasn’t sure what image to put with this post, but then this one popped into my mind.

I talk about fairness a lot in the Poetry Bulletin, and whenever I use that word, I’m thinking of him. He was the most tender person I knew as a child, and he was also firm when an issue or problem touched on his values. He showed me how love is really at the root of being truly convicted about something. When I talk about power here, I’m really saying: poets, I love you, we can have each other’s backs. When I get angry about parts of the publishing system, I go back to thinking of Papa, and he reminds me to be tender again.

These are ongoing difficult days in the world, and maybe a poetry update is the last thing you need right now. I get it… the poetry news will be here when you need it. Wherever you are, I hope you also have an ancestor with you now to pull you toward whatever it is you most need. 💚

This is a deeper dive into publishing a poetry book in 2025—the usual Poetry Bulletin for February will be on its way soon. I’m also working on a special update on compensation (e.g., royalties, author copies, etc.). I create extra resources like this one as I have the spoons and with the support of paid subscribers. Thank you to everyone who shares these tools with others and backs the project.

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Special Focus: Reading Periods for First Books or First/Second Books

In January, I shared the annual update on reading periods for full-length poetry books. Today I’m exploring what the data says about reading periods open only to first books or first/second books.

When it comes to fee fairness and transparency, I feel like reading periods for first books should set the standard. These are doors expressly shaped for launching poets’ publishing careers and finding emerging voices. It seems like it would be essential—part of the mission, really—to make the door wide open and welcoming.

As of the January 2025 update, I track over 170 reading periods for full-length poetry books. Since then, a few new reading periods have been added to the spreadsheet—inevitably whenever I share the annual update, it nudges people to share info in return, which is great!

To keep the data consistent across the 2025 written reports, like this one, I’ll keep working with the spreadsheet as it stood on January 8, 2025, when I released the main annual update. That lets us compare smaller areas, like first books, to the larger whole of poetry book publishing.

⟶ FYI! For simplicity, I’ll be referring to these as “first books” reading periods, rather than continuing to say “first or first/second books” everywhere. Also, please note that this data is all about full-length poetry books (not chapbooks).

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This year, 26 of the 170+ poetry reading periods focus on first poetry books or first/second books.

Two of these 26 reading periods charge no fee.

Nine of them offer fee support of some kind.

That’s 11 reading periods for first books—or 42%—that are accessible in some way. This is a little lower than the average of the list as a whole, where 44% of deadlines are accessible.

The rest—15 reading periods for first books—charge anywhere from $20 to $35.

One of these reading periods—the Gatewood Prize at Switchback Books—charges $25, provides no fee support, and offers no cash prize or royalties. More on that below, in the compensation section.

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In 2025, almost 60% of reading periods for first books exclude poets who can’t afford to pay.

Last year, 75% of these reading periods excluded poets who can’t afford fees. So that’s a roughly 15% improvement, and that’s good news. But it’s still surprising that the majority of these reading periods are accessible only to poets who can pay to play.

This is a space where access means so much:

→ When you can’t get your early books even considered by a publisher, what happens to your momentum as a writer?

→ Inaccessibility and exclusion have a long-term, practical impact. This is not an abstract problem or a theoretical idea of momentum and accessibility. When you exclude poets because of fees, you’re part of delaying their work and their access to other opportunities, potentially by years.

Most reading periods are annual. And in some cases, that annual deadline is the only chance to be considered by a particular press. So if you miss an opportunity one year because you just can’t afford it, you have to wait another year for the chance to try again.

Having a book is a key to many later stages of a writing vocation (or career, if you like that word): post-publication grants and awards, residencies, invitations to present, chances to read with other writers, interviews, etc.

But those later stages are often out of reach as long as a first book is out of reach. When a reading period isn’t accessible, it has an exponential effect on a writer’s journey.

Reading Periods for First or First/Second Books

I’m sharing the list below with direct links to the presses, in case you don’t want to sort through the big spreadsheet.

Changes Book Prize — This is the most generous and accessible reading period on the entire list. A $10,000 prize and more, with no submission fee.

Green Bottle Press

Perugia Press

Ghost Peach Prize in Poetry

Switchback Books Gatewood Prize

YesYes Books Pamet River Prize

Inverted Syntax Tabbikha Prize for Poetry (for SWANA diaspora)

Inverted Syntax Aggrey Prize (for BIPOC poets)

Inverted Syntax Sublingua Prize for Poetry (for female-identifying)

Trio House Press First or Second Book Awards

Milkweed Editions Jake Adam York Prize (note caution in October 2024 bulletin)

Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize

Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize

Black Lawrence Press St. Lawrence Book Award

APR Honickman Prize

Silverfish Review Press’ Gerald Cable Award

Yale Series of Younger Poets

Autumn House Rising Writer Prize

BOA Editions - A. Poulin, Jr. Prize

Elixir Press - Antivenom Poetry Award

Tupelo Press - Berkshire Prize

Wick Poetry Prize

Juniper Prize for Poetry

Persea Books - Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize

Omnidawn - First and Second Book Contest

Academy of American Poets First Book Award

Fees as an indicator, within an ecosystem

Some of these publishers just received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts here in the United States. I find it useful to notice which publishers are receiving federal funds, CLMP grants, and other resources while continuing to charge high submission fees with no fee waivers.

For instance, Tupelo Press continues to be a top fee charger, does not offer waivers or fee support, and recently received funding totaling $25,000 from the NEA and CLMP.

Tupelo Press had revenue of over $375,000 in their 2023 financial reporting. In that same report, they shared that manuscript submissions brought in $149,240 of “program service revenue.”

In fact, submission fees exceeded Tupelo Press’ book sales, which were $108,402.

Like the case of the National Poetry Series, it’s all of us submitting—this collective of poets that we are, which has more power than we might think—that’s the primary funder of Tupelo Press.

As always, I’m not just trying to wax on about fees alone. I understand some publishers’ rationale behind them, and I hope I’ve been clear and fair about lifting up different models and celebrating the presses trying new things.

To me, submission fees are kind of like an indicator species in the ecosystem of poetry publishing. When we look at them in context, like in the example of Tupelo Press here, I think we can get more clear and honest about the state of acccess, power, and fairness in this ecosystem.

The average submission fee for a first book reading period is higher than the overall average.

In 2025, the overall average fee (for the whole list of 170+ reading periods) is $24. But almost 70% of the reading periods for first books charge more than that. Nine of them charge $30 or more.

In 2025, the average fee among just first book reading periods is $26—one dollar higher than it was in 2024. And $2 higher than the average fee in the full list of reading periods.

In the main 2025 update, I shared how significant the gap can be between presses on the question of fees. Often it’s smaller, scrappy presses that prioritize accessibility with lower fees, skewing the average and blurring the reality of high-charging presses.

When I parsed this for 2025, I found the more accessible reading periods (on the big list) actually charge an average of $15.

If we were to imagine that $15 as a benchmark of a fair (or at least more standard) fee, only one of the charging reading periods for first books meet it: Perugia Press. And Perugia is also fee-free for poets who are Black, Indigenous, and women of color. This is a more accessible model than most reading periods that charge a fee.

Prizes and Compensation for First Books

Two of these reading periods do not offer a cash prize or cash advance:

• Green Bottle Press has free submissions for everyone. Authors are given 20 copies of their book and earn royalties after 100 copies are sold.

• The Gatewood Prize at Switchback Books charges $25 and offers no fee support. The only thing the author receives, according to their guidelines, is 30 copies of their book.

This is an interesting comparison of two publishing models. Where has each press decided to recoup the cost of doing business? Which approach feels like a more fair relationship with writers?

Among the 24 reading periods for first books that do offer a cash advance or cash prize, the total cash offered comes to $49,500.

Keep in mind that $10,000 of that comes just from Changes Press. With Changes included, the average cash prize is $2,063.

If Changes is pulled out of the group, since it skews the data for the better, the average cash prize for first books is $1,717.

Compensation varies a lot from there. Some presses might offer a lower-than-average prize but offer more author copies or a generous royalty percentage. For instance, the Pamet River Prize at YesYes Books has a $1,000 prize but also includes 40 author copies, 15-25% royalties, and $500 toward a book tour.

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The Stakes

There’s probably no more overt or practical place for a press to show their values at work than in their submissions process. It’s the door into a relationship with them. It’s the way they let people come to their table, or not.

Every submission is a chance to choose or refuse the world the publisher is offering. Every submission can be an act of solidarity with fellow poets.

At a time in the world when power keeps flowing into some of the worst hands, it helps me to remember that at least when it comes to my art, I’m not at a loss for what to try next or who to stand with… my art may feel uncertain, it may hold some fear, but it is not disempowered. That might sound earnest, but who cares? All we have is what we make of our next choice, our next poem, our next submission, our next book.

“I have just realized the stakes are myself…”

Hey poets—it’s now been eight years (!!) of this project. If you’re new here, the Poetry Bulletin is: a free spreadsheet of submission periods for poetry books / a collective resource made better by sharing info with each other, through monthly updates / a project of building access and transparency.

This has always been about making it easier for you, on a personal level, to get your writing out there. I don't blame anyone for taking the spreadsheet and working with it that way, with the singular goal of taking care of your own poetry. It takes a lot to get just one book drafted, finished, and published.

(and)

After seven years and who-knows-how-many hours of research, I sense we’ve got more clarity than ever to move with care—to act collectively—when deciding where to submit in 2025.

We know where the gaps are in poetry book publishing.

We know there are poets getting left out.

And we know where the possibilities are.

We know which publishers are part of creating them.

In the gaps, you have power.

In the possibilities, you have a say—

Every submission is an action.

You get to choose if solidarity with low-income poets means refusing to submit to the publishers who exclude them.

Every submission is a chance to refuse business as usual.

You get to choose if solidarity with Palestine means sharing your work with publishers committed to PACBI, and encouraging more publishers to sign on.

You’ll find the 2025 spreadsheet below, with details on 173 reading periods. I've also got updates on submission fee trends (with a handful of significant fee increases) and fee fairness in this post.

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The Poetry Bulletin is a free resource that began as I tracked submissions for my first book, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. In 2018, I started sharing the spreadsheet with fellow poets, and the project took off from there. It now reaches over 4,700 writers. I’m just one person taking care of a project that’s grown a ton, so thanks for your understanding if you spot any errors or additions—and please leave a comment here if you do.

Your support of this work means a lot. If you have the means and want to help this project keep going, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Half of paid subscription support goes to a fund to help poets cover book submission fees. Half goes to researching, updating, and creating new resources.

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And as always, don’t hoard the goods. Share this with a poet whose book you want to read someday.

Here for the possibilities,

Emily

2025 Poetry Book Publishing Spreadsheet

NEW THIS YEAR: Column H notes whether the publisher has committed to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). I’d appreciate your help in updating this and encouraging presses to sign on.

PACBI isn’t the last word on or only form of solidarity, but it’s a place to begin. If you’re submitting in solidarity with writers facing genocide now, in Palestine and elsewhere, it’s a way to find presses that are more likely to share your values in spirit and in practice. Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza both have lists of presses committed to PACBI.

About the spreadsheet in general: I track contests and reading periods for full-length poetry books. Every January, I go line by line, one reading period at a time, to update the list of 170+ opportunities. It’s a spreadsheet on Google that you can copy and customize to track your own submissions:

2025 Poetry Book Submission Spreadsheet

This is up-to-date as of January 7, 2025 and will be updated throughout the year. The spreadsheet is sorted by date. Ongoing (i.e., no deadline) reading periods appear at the end of the spreadsheet. Some reading periods have deadlines yet to be announced. Those appear with “TBA” at the very end of the spreadsheet.

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TRENDS: Submission Fees in 2025

About 79% (137) of the 173 reading periods in 2025 charge a fee. The average fee—$24—is higher by $1 this year.

But talking about one average fee doesn’t tell the full story. It hides how significant the gap is between presses on the question of fees:

• 95 reading periods—almost 70% of those charging a fee—charge more than the average fee of $24.

• If you look at just those 95 periods charging over $24, the average fee is actually $28.

• This means presses prioritizing lower, more accessible fees skew the total average and provide cover for the top chargers.

• In fact, among those (42 reading periods) charging less than the average fee, the average fee is actually $15.

So in reality, there are three benchmarks when it comes to fees:

• The least accessible reading periods, with an average fee of $28

• The more accessible reading periods, with an average fee of $15

• The freely/fully accessible reading periods, with no reading fees

As a poet, these ranges can help you pay attention to a fair exchange:

If a press is charging in the highest range, are they offering anything extra to warrant the higher cost? Is there a larger cash advance, higher royalties, etc.?

For publishers, this is a quick metric to evaluate your submission policies and openness to poets from a range of backgrounds:

Where do you want to fall on the range of accessibility?

Does your fee reflect your mission as a press?

If you’re in the least accessible group right now, are you offering fee support of any kind to keep the door open?

As I shared in the 2024 annual update, fee fairness comes in many forms, as a number of publishers have already shown. We’re not lacking for good ideas on how to approach fees more fairly.

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Big increases, low accessibility: Six reading periods are charging over 15% more in 2025.

Only one of them offers fee support.

Compared to the numbers I had for the January 2024 update, the following reading periods have each increased their submission fee by over 15 percent:

• Switchback Books - Gatewood Prize: Increased from $20 to $25. No fee waivers or fee support mentioned in the guidelines. This reading period also offers no cash compensation—the prize is 30 author copies. Considering compensation relative to the fee, this is the least equitable reading period on the list of 170+ reading periods.

• Autumn House - Rising Writer (36 and under): Increased from $25 to $30. This is the only reading period in this group that says they offer fee waivers.
  

• Barry Spacks Poetry Prize: Increased from $25 to $30. No fee waivers or fee support mentioned in the guidelines.
  

• BOA Editions - A. Poulin Jr Prize: Increased from $25 to $30. No fee waivers or fee support mentioned in the guidelines.

• Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prizes: Increased from $25 to $30. The cash prize increased this year along with the fee, but they offer no fee waivers or fee support.
  

• Sarabande Books - Kathryn A. Morton Prize: Increased from $29 to $34. No fee waivers or fee support mentioned. This is the second highest fee on the full list of 170+ reading periods—making the Sarabande reading period the second least accessible period on the list. The most inaccessible on the list is the National Poetry Series, which charges $1 more ($35) and also does not offer any fee support. But the National Poetry Series awards $10,000—five times the cash prize of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize.
  

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How many hours should a poet have to work to make a submission?

If you live in Michigan like I do and make minimum wage ($10.56 per hour as of January 1, 2025), you’d have to work almost three hours (depending on taxes) to afford just one submission at the average fee of $24.

If you want to submit to a reading period like the National Poetry Series or Sarabande’s above and you make minimum wage, you’ll need to work about four hours to afford the fee, depending on your net after taxes.

A half-day of your labor for one submission fee.

Is this a fair exchange?

How accessible is poetry book publishing?

Based on the data I have now, 56% of poetry book reading periods are excluding poets who can’t afford fees.

Of the 173 reading periods I track, 36 do not charge any fee at all.

Of the reading periods that do charge fees, 40 of them claim to offer fee support or waivers of some kind.

And I’m being generous about what “fee support” means. For example, the Michael Waters Poetry Prize offers 50% off to graduate students only.

This means if you can’t afford to pay submission fees, you can access 76 of the 173 reading periods—assuming you can get a fee waiver or fee support from those who claim to offer it.

That’s just 44% of the opportunities to publish your book.

Meaning your voice is not included in 56% of the poetry book ecosystem, to the extent it’s tracked here. 1

Is this list of 173 the absolute, entire ecosystem? No. I don’t include presses that only offer hybrid publishing or demand you hit a pre-sales number to even go to print. While I share region-specific and niche opportunities (e.g., contests for people of one age group) in the monthly bulletin, I haven’t yet included them on the big spreadsheet.

So a poet may find there are more doors to open beyond this list. But I do believe the list of 173 reading periods is a strong representation of what the “front door” into poetry looks like and how closed it is.

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Least accessible (again): National Poetry Series

The highest fee. No fee support offered, even when asked to reconsider. Almost $55,000 in submission fees collected in one year.

The highest submission fee on the list is $35. Three reading periods charge this, including the National Poetry Series. Two of them offer fee support of some kind:

• Michael Waters Poetry Prize at the University of Southern Indiana — offers 50% discount to graduate students

• Academy of American Poets First Book Award — offers fee waivers

NB: Omnidawn, which used to be on this list for its open reading period and first + second book contest, has lowered their fee from $35 to $30. They also continue to offer fee waivers.

The National Poetry Series is the only one charging so much and not offering fee support of any kind. As I shared in my update last July, the staff made it clear:

• They view submission fees as revenue and have increased the fee before to generate more revenue.

• They get between 1,400 and 1,700 submissions per year. Without any outside pressure or a drop in submissions (i.e., a loss of revenue), they don’t intend to revisit their decision to exclude poets who can’t afford the fee.

According to its 990 filed in December 2022, the National Poetry Series has an annual revenue of about $400,000 and assets of over $700,000. Just over $328,000 was listed as expenses for publishing and promoting the five books chosen in the series.

And $54,495 in program fees were collected in just one year—as in, the submission fees, or what the National Poetry Series describes in the 990 as: “In order for a candidate to be eligible for an award they must submit a fee with the submission of their manuscript. This fee helps defray costs in the judging of the awards to candidates.”

Is this a fair exchange?

Does it reflect the mission of the National Poetry Series to exclude any poet who can’t pay to participate?

Every submission is an action, every submission can be a refusal. May our words find worthy readers this year—

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More on the way… including a closer look at compensation in 2025, plus trends on fees and access to reading periods for first books. I love to know how this project is changing how you submit or think about your work. I love celebrating when you get the big “yes” to your book—drop a comment and a pre-order link if your book found its home with these tools!

Thank you for keeping this project going!

All the tools and posts here are free—and will continue to be free. This project is made possible by your open sharing of updates and information, my husband’s health insurance and the sweet miracle of Nurtec (just keeping it real ha), and paid subscriber support. Thank you. 💚

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“Our service is needed as writers. Our service is needed as human beings, in every room, in every space. Especially where there is something to risk, or there is an opportunity to be lost, or that courage will really cost you. That’s what’s most needed. I don’t want to write anything that is a consolation. I don’t want to console.”

— Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, winner of the 2024 National Book Award in poetry

Hi poets — keeping my hello brief for an important update:

• Started research for the annual update on poetry book publishers. The publisher update for 2025 will be the biggest yet, as I keep adding compensation info, PACBI solidarity, and more.

• Now tracking 190+ reading periods. I go one by one for the update, so my attention will be there for the time being.

• That means my inbox is in “out of office” mode—this includes requests for submission fee support. Those will re-open in January. Please don’t send a request until I share that it’s open again.

Thank you…

Especially to everyone who shared these tools with fellow poets—like I said at the start of 2024, let’s not hoard the goods! Information is its own kind of wealth! Redistribution of wealth includes redistribution of information!

& thanks to everyone who supports the project with paid subscriptions. Big thanks to the anonymous backers of the fee support fund, who chipped in extra when it was needed this year.

I heard from more poets this year who got the “yes” on their book because of this project. So many dances of joy at my keyboard. Much-needed good news in a tough year!

This project belongs to all of us. I’m one writer who shared a spreadsheet in 2018, and it’s grown so much since then. It’s all of us trading information, calling for transparency, refusing gatekeepers, and exchanging mutual aid who are doing the real work.

In Practice

• “I thought about calling it a hybrid memoir but then thought, What if I just called it a memoir and then people were confronted with poetry unexpectedly?” — on their new book Pretty, in a conversation with Shlagha Borah at The Offing

• A writing experiment from Bernadette Mayer’s list: “Take a traditional text like the pledge of allegiance to the flag. For every noun, replace it with one that is seventh or ninth down from the original one in the dictionary. For instance, the word ‘honesty’ would be replaced by ‘honey dew melon.’ Investigate what happens; different dictionaries will produce different results.”

• “For me, bipolar poetics means treasuring extremes. Maybe that’s in form, right? A poem that gradually cuts itself down, until all that’s left is a single-word stanza. Or, in looking at a collection, there could be a massive, cluttered poem following a sparser one.” — Bri Gonzalez in conversation with SG Huerta about their new collection, A Wellness Check

• A practice book of mine came out recently: Surfacing, a book of closing practices for creative writers. You can get it at Bookshop.org or your local bookstore. (Outside the U.S., the book is also at Barnes & Noble and Waterstones.)
  

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Creative Support: Reading Series, Awards & More

If you’re writing and submitting in solidarity with writers facing genocide now, you’ll find tips for researching and vetting organizations in this document. Even a couple minutes of searching Twitter, Substack, or an organization’s website can be clarifying.

• Dec 27 — Call for Applications: Emerge Summer 2025 Hybrid Disability Studies Workshop for Disabled Activists, Artists, Cultural Producers, Filmmakers, and Academics (h/t )

• December 31 – Emergency Residency Programme for Artists and Cultural Practitioners Living in Palestine – a three-month residency with accommodations, stipend, round-trip travel, and more support

• Dec 31 — Sundress Publications Microgrant for Palestinian Writers

• Dec 31 — The Nossrat Yassini Poetry Prize, a post-publication prize for first books published in 2024

• Dec 31 — Sundress Publications is seeking readers for its 2025 edition of the Poets in Pajamas Reading Series. This is a monthly, virtual reading series.

• Jan 4 — is seeking 2025 workshop proposals.

• Jan 6 — Mizna is reading submissions for an unthemed summer issue. No submission fees and honorarium of $200, one-year subscription, and five contributor copies.

• Jan 17 — The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment is open for their 2025 book awards. This is a post-publication award for books released in 2023 or 2024.

• Jan 31 — Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, grants of $500 to $2000 for “individual feminist women in the arts with primary residence in the US and Canada”

• Here are more deadlines and resources for Palestinian writers and those who want to publish in solidarity with them.
  

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Upcoming Deadlines for Poetry Manuscripts

Between now and early January, there are no reading periods with presses that are working in solidarity with writers facing genocide.

There are 7+ deadlines for full-length poetry books between now and early 2025. The full spreadsheet of upcoming deadlines is available here.

Has your favorite publisher committed to PACBI yet?

When in doubt, ask. Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza have lists of presses committed to PACBI. It can be helpful to mention a few peer publishers when encouraging a magazine or press to sign on.

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing or want to share a resource, please leave a comment.

1. “In this way, the job of the editor is not merely to be a listener but to be a cultivator of relations: to provide the shelter necessary to keeping each other, let alone each other’s artistry, alive... I learned that to be a mizna was to be an im/possible wound: to know that many are unwilling to meet us in the depths of our catastrophe, and thus, possibility emerges when confronted by the miracle of finding our people and becoming more radically ourselves together.” — George Abraham, in the new issue of Mizna. I keep returning to this essay. It’s helped me land over the past week, with language (imagination/perspective) I needed to keep showing up with all of you, here in the bulletin and elsewhere. I’m guessing I’m not the only one who needs some re-orienting and re-grounding now… really hope this essay gets shared and read widely.
   

2. Next week, on November 21, Darius Simpson is hosting a free virtual workshop and discussion on Political Poetics. You can register here.
   

3. Workshops4Gaza is bringing writers, artists, and educators together to offer online workshops, with all proceeds going to Palestinians. They’ve got a handful of upcoming workshops and also donate all book sales.

In Practice

• “a move in some poems that irks me lately is the move from recognizing injustice & suffering to a form of ‘but look at this small beautiful thing.’ it rings false. or i want more than small beautiful things in an otherwise intolerable world. i want justice & more livable worlds” — Chen Chen

• “I think the poetic line is the perfect space to enact transformation. To enact possibility. What’s a landscape, if not a space we build with this intention? The poetic line is the thing that resists foreclosure, that bucks against determinism.” — C. T. Salazar, with notes on the elements of the river and the poetic line

• Over 5,500 writers and book workers have signed on to a boycott of “Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians.” You can sign the open letter here.

• This week, one of my own projects comes out: Surfacing, a book of closing practices for creative writers. You can get it at Bookshop.org or your local bookstore. (Outside the U.S., the book is also available at Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, and McNally Robinson.)

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Creative Support: Workshops, Awards & More

If you’re writing and submitting in solidarity with writers facing genocide now, I included tips for researching and vetting organizations in this document. Even a couple minutes of searching Twitter, Substack, or an organization’s website can be clarifying.

• Dec 2 — For small presses affected by the closure of SPD, CLMP has announced the Small Press Futures Fund—and your press does not have to have 501(c)3 status to apply, thank goodness. (Know of other opportunities like this? Please share!)

• Dec 2 — Foglifter Press is seeking a community manager. This position comes with an honorarium.

• Dec 31 — Sundress Publications Microgrant for Palestinian Writers

• Jan 17 — The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment is open for their 2025 book awards. This is a post-publication award for books released in 2023 or 2024.

• Feb 1 — Sundress Academy for the Arts is now open for applications to its spring 2025 residency. They use a reparations payment model, with support grants available to cover the cost of travel, food, and child care.

• Songs of the Sunbirds, a column at New Orleans Review, continues to seek submissions in a variety of formats, from poetry to video to letters and art and more. All contributions are paid, and submissions are free. NOR is also open to submissions (fee-free for certain groups) in a number of other genres right now.

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Upcoming Deadlines

Between now and the end of 2024, there are two reading periods with presses that are working in solidarity with writers facing genocide:

• Nov 15 — Nightboat Books Poetry Prize

• Nov 30 — Abode Press is open for poetry and hybrid chapbook submissions. Fee waivers are available for queer and/or trans writers of color.

There are 10+ deadlines for full-length poetry books between now and the end of 2024. The full spreadsheet of upcoming deadlines is available here.

Has your favorite publisher committed to PACBI?

When in doubt, ask. Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza have lists of presses committed to PACBI. It can be helpful to mention a few peer publishers when encouraging a magazine or press to sign on.

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing or want to share a resource, please leave a comment.

Thank you to the poets who are paying attention, and not just to campaign slogans. Thank you to the poets who are being changed and writing about it, leaving a map. Thank you to the presses that are listening, and acting.

Love to those mourning lost family members and friends, lost homes, lost trees, lost pets, lost universities, lost libraries—in the midst of genocide in Palestine, and now we turn to Lebanon, and now we grieve Marcellus Williams, and now also Hurricane Helene, and—love to those who recognize how these events are connected and refuse to turn away. The bombs dropped on one community intensify the conditions that make the hurricanes more deadly in another. The police officer blocking the entrance to the grocery store in North Carolina shares a posture with the soldier at the checkpoint in Gaza.

Love to the poets holding multiple tragedies, feeling how it’s all connected but maybe also sometimes feeling the limits of what you can do or who you can trust. This month, with contributions from writers like SG Huerta, Chiara Di Lello, and Rasha Abdulhadi, I’ve gathered some resources to try and keep meeting this moment:

If you need support…

• Palestinian and Lebanese writers, and writers affected by Hurricane Helene: I’m setting aside $150 in extra submission fee funds this month for you, for submissions of any kind (book, residency, poetry, essays, fiction, etc.). Just drop me an email with: one or two places where you’re submitting + how much the fee is. I’ll get you the funds via Paypal.

• A collection of Hurricane Helene relief resources for Appalachia (thanks to for sharing, in an update with many other helpful resources… lots of good thoughts to the RWW writers who were on a mountain when this hit, glad you’re home safely)

• For disabled folks impacted by Hurricane Helene, the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies has a disability and disaster hotline: 800-626-4959 or hotline@disasterstrategies.org

• Palestine Legal is here for those losing jobs, housing, etc. as a result of advocating for Palestine.

If you can share…

• The Municipality of Gaza is repairing water wells—this campaign ends October 10 and is less than 70% of the way to its goal, so please give soon.

• A list of Lebanon relief funds seeking donations (via Mizna)

• Support relief efforts for disabled survivors of Hurricane Helene.

• eKy Mutual Aid is an established community fund, you can donate through them to get cash directly to people who need it after Hurricane Helene. Their Facebook group also has specific requests for aid.

• Workshops4Gaza is bringing writers, artists, and educators together to offer online workshops, with all proceeds going to Palestinians. They’ve got a handful of upcoming workshops and also donate all book sales.

Is your favorite organization or publisher in solidarity?
If not, have you asked them about it?

You have power here. When in doubt about where an organization stands, ask. In just one example: recently signed on to PACBI thanks to encouragement from one of their contributors.

• This statement from the Gay Little Yiddish Theatre shows how PACBI can make solidarity more specific, urgent, and tangible. It’s “a first step to set a clear line,” as Ruth Geye wrote. “Calls for pluralism are useless, ‘holding space for diverse perspectives’ is useless. While you’re complaining about holes in your big tent, people are dying.”

• Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza have lists of presses committed to PACBI. It can be helpful to mention a few peer publishers when encouraging a magazine or press to sign on.

• There are more tips for researching and vetting organizations in the resource Chiara and I have been working on.

Upcoming Deadlines

Between now and the end of November, there are two reading periods with presses that are working in solidarity with writers facing genocide:

• Nov 15 — Nightboat Books Poetry Prize

• Nov 30 — Abode Press is open for poetry and hybrid chapbook submissions. Fee waivers are available for queer and/or trans writers of color.

And one caution: Milkweed Editions, in collaboration with Copper Nickel, has a deadline this month for the Jake Adam York Prize. Please read Su Hwang’s open letter about terminating a publishing contract with Milkweed. Su is also supporting a BIPOC editor who is fighting an NDA to be able to share the discrimination she experienced while working at Milkweed.

There are 10+ deadlines for full-length poetry books between now and early November. The full spreadsheet of upcoming deadlines is available here.

How is this time changing you as a writer?

• Just in case you haven’t read it yet: “Notes on Craft” (a core text from the past year—a piece to share in writing workshops, in your writing newsletter, with that arts organization you volunteer for that’s still silent, etc.)

• I find it re-centering to hear from other writers and artists on how this time is changing their practice. If you know of any of these stories or wrote one yourself, please share. One I appreciated recently: “to make revolution irresistible” by .

• Don’t get clever—this reminder from Rasha still rings true. There’s a new conversation out with them on the Death Panel podcast, including a 15-minute guided writing practice for navigating this time.

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ASK FOR EDITORS

Have you signed on to PACBI, supported Palestinian writers through direct action, or showed up in solidarity in other tangible ways? How did you approach this?

If you’re an editor or publisher, would you be open to sharing one or two field notes from your process here? This would be a simple way to give others ideas and practical examples. The format can be flexible: lists of practices/questions you found helpful to ask or try, short essays on your process (500 words-ish), or brief interviews (I could go back and forth with you via email).

Please drop me an email if you’re open to this.

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing or want to share a resource, please leave a comment.

Hi poets — September seems to be a time of re-committing to practice, even if you’re not formally teaching or returning to school. If you’re considering workshops to take (or lead) now, check out Workshops4Gaza.

They’re bringing writers, artists, and educators together to offer online workshops, with all proceeds going to Palestinians. They’ve got a handful of upcoming workshops and are looking for more folks to lead workshops.

I wanted to highlight Samah Fadil’s upcoming workshop: 15 Memories, Poetry as History. It’s on October 12, and proceeds will benefit Samah’s sister, who is resettling her family in Canada after surviving genocide.

Register now

🎉 Milestone: Submission Fee Support

We’ve passed $10,000 in funds redistributed to over 200 poets who otherwise couldn’t afford submission fees to get their books out there.

Thank you to everyone who has chipped into this fund and to paid supporters here on Substack—half of every paid subscription goes toward submission fee support.

Requests continue to come in at a quick pace this year, and they continue to exceed the funds available. I’m catching up on a recent surge in emails on this project and appreciate your patience!

You can find more details here.

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Creative Support: Workshops, Awards & More

If you’re writing and submitting in solidarity with writers facing genocide now, I included tips for researching and vetting organizations in this document. Even a couple minutes of searching Twitter, Substack, or an organization’s website can be clarifying.

• Sept 20 — Periplus, a mentoring collective, is open for applications for its 2025 fellowships, for writers in the United States who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color.

• Sept 23 — The 2025 Tin House Winter Online Workshop is offering a scholarship for Palestinian writers, with no application fee.

• Sept 23 — The McColl Center is accepting applications for its artist-in-residence program for parents and educators who otherwise wouldn’t be able to participate.

• Jan 6 — The Glen Arbor Arts Center is accepting applications for its 2025 artists-in-residence program. This is near me in northern Michigan, where water waits for you in every direction. If you’ve never been to Lake Michigan, I promise she’s full of good writing energy. I’d like to cover the application fee for one writer for whom it’s a barrier—drop me a note out if that’s you.

• Feb 1 — Sundress Academy for the Arts is now open for applications to its spring 2025 residency. They use a reparations payment model, with support grants available to cover the cost of travel, food, and child care.

• Songs of the Sunbirds, a column at New Orleans Review, has welcomed three new editors and increased the honorarium for prose pieces to $300. They’re seeking submissions in a variety of formats, from poetry to video to letters and art and more. All contributions are paid, and submissions are free.

• Rolling — Sundress Reads is looking for recently published books to review.

Upcoming Deadlines

Between now and late October, there are two reading periods with presses that are working in solidarity with writers facing genocide:

• Heads up for October—be my press mate! Game Over Books will be open October 1 through October 5 for books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. I’ve loved my experience with Game Over and admire my press mates a ton… I know I probably sound deeply earnest whenever I talk about this, but the publishing machine can be so disillusioning, and this crew just gives me hope.

• Nov 30 — Abode Press is open for poetry and hybrid chapbook submissions. Fee waivers are available for queer and/or trans writers of color.

PACBI isn’t the last word on or only form of solidarity, but it’s a place to begin. If you’re submitting in solidarity with writers facing genocide now, in Palestine and elsewhere, it’s a way to find presses that are more likely to share your values in spirit and in practice. Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza both have lists of presses committed to PACBI.

There are about a dozen deadlines for full-length poetry books between now and mid-October. The full spreadsheet of upcoming manuscript deadlines is available here.

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing or want to share a resource, please leave a comment.

Hey poets — The start of August means the return of the Sealey Challenge, an invitation to read one book of poetry every day this month.

“One book” might mean a poetry zine, a chapbook, a full-length collection, an audiobook, etc.

Some folks read by themes, focus on debut books, or choose books from a specific community. I’ve turned it into a craft experiment before, reading for one element or technique in the writing, such as:

• Reading with attention to line breaks, comparing from day to day to figure out what works and how, what pulls you into a poem, and what you could try in your own work.

• Reading with a focus on titles—both individual poem titles and the book’s title. How does the book title promise something about the book or get complicated by the poems?

• Reading for beginnings and endings. What does the last poem of the book know that the first poem doesn’t, and vice versa? Which poems work like turning points (or disruptions) in between?

You don’t have to join in with any particular focus, but I find having a focus helps me just start reading, instead of browsing my bookshelf for too long.

If you’re joining the Sealey Challenge, what are you hoping to read or how are you hoping to read? If you’re open to sharing, drop a comment.

Many presses also run specials to celebrate the challenge, so it’s a great time to pick up new books and support small presses. My publisher, Game Over Books, has a 50% sale going on (use code SALE50)… if you’re focusing on books with unapologetically spacious titles, ha, mine is on sale and I’d be grateful for the support: Divination with a Human Heart Attached —and it has plenty of great, long-titled company at Game Over: Don’t Thank God, Thank The Crash Test Dummies That Came Before You and Recipe for Time Travel in Case We Lose Each Other and Erev Gildene: The Pop Rock Survival Guide for the Modern Jewish Millennial.

(At some point I want to do a round table or post or something about book titles. Especially long book titles. And sharp, short titles. If I had to do it over, I might opt for a shorter title, but it’s because of things I could only learn after the book was published. I wonder about book titles as a space for taking risks. How much can a book title do? Do you wonder about these things?)

emily

In Practice

• “…if you have the feeling of winning a golden ticket that will save you when you get into the program, you are in danger. You are already giving that institution too much power. You will save you, as it were. To believe otherwise is to give too much power to the faculty and your new peers.” — on MFA programs, submitting your work, finding/creating your community, and more

• If you’re working on back cover copy, pitching your book to a press, or just trying to figure out how to describe your writing to others, of Pine State Publicity has thoughts on—and real world examples of— “chiseling away the generic.” (Full disclosure: I worked with Pine State for my debut and try to keep bias in mind when sharing things from folks I’ve worked with. This post is like a clinic in book positioning and shows how more creativity is possible, so it felt worthy of sharing.)

• There is now a camera that writes AI poetry. I stumbled into this right after hearing about someone’s boss who used AI poetry in a company announcement. I just… yeah… sigh. (All those figurative light bulbs, powered by cliché.)

Creative Support: Workshops, Awards & More

If you’re writing and submitting in solidarity with writers facing genocide now, I included tips for researching and vetting organizations in this document. Even a couple minutes of searching Twitter, Substack, or an organization’s website can be clarifying.

• Workshops4Gaza is bringing writers, artists, and educators together to offer online workshops, with all proceeds going to Palestinians in Gaza. They’ve got a handful of upcoming workshops and are looking for more folks to lead workshops.

• August 1 — Granum Foundation Prizes “to help U.S.-based writers complete substantive literary works—such as poetry books, essay or short story collections, novels, and memoirs—or to help launch these works.”

• August 15 — Arc Poetry is seeking a Canadian poet to be their next virtual poet-in-residence.

• August 18 — The Center for Book Arts invites BIPOC writers, poets, and artists to apply for the Small Press Incubator.

• Songs of the Sunbirds, a column at New Orleans Review, has welcomed three new editors and increased the honorarium for prose pieces to $300. They’re seeking submissions in a variety of formats, from poetry to video to letters and art and more. All contributions are paid, and submissions are free.

Share

Upcoming Deadlines

Between now and mid-September, there are two reading periods with presses that are working in solidarity with writers facing genocide:

• Abode Press is open for poetry and hybrid chapbook submissions. Fee waivers are available for queer and/or trans writers of color. (Also appreciation / more of this please! for guidelines that are transparent, generous, and easy to read.)

• August 31 — Sundress Publications has an open reading period for full-length poetry books and has been vocal and concrete (e.g., a microgrant) in supporting Palestinian writers, although PACBI isn’t mentioned in their posts or site.

PACBI isn’t the last word on or only form of solidarity, but it’s a place to begin. If you’re submitting in solidarity with writers facing genocide now, in Palestine and elsewhere, it’s a way to find presses that are more likely to share your values in spirit and in practice. Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza both have lists of presses committed to PACBI.

There are about a dozen deadlines for full-length poetry books between now and mid-September. The full spreadsheet of upcoming manuscript deadlines is available here.

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing or want to share a resource, please leave a comment.

Hey poets — you’ll still find deadlines and resources below, but this month I’m also sharing two important project updates:

• Submission fee support milestones

• Fee waiver research progress, with insight on the National Poetry Series

Submission Fee Support Fund

In March 2021, a submission fee support fund was added to this project, for poets excluded by costly book submission fees (steps to request support here). Some highlights and transparency on numbers:

• Over 200 poets have now been supported, as of this month!

• We’ve funded 79 requests in 2024 so far, and each has from one to three submissions covered. This year I’m getting many more requests than I can fill—for comparison, in all of 2023, we funded 50 requests.

• Nearly $10,000 in fee support has been given since 2021—with over $2,700 of that given in 2024 so far.

How is submission fee support funded?

• Your paid subscriptions on Substack fund most of this. Revenue is split 50-50: Half to submission fee support. Half to caring for this project: domain, hosting, new research (e.g., fee waiver outreach), and commissioning articles/field notes from poets (more on that soon).

• The Poetry Bulletin has almost 4,300 readers, and right now 125 of you support the project with a paid subscription—thank you!

• In 2024 (so far), $2,024.95 in fee support was funded with your subscriptions.

• Some poets have tried/waited many times to get support. To try and cover the gap between incoming requests and available Substack funds, I chip in from personal funds when my guy Carl and I can—so far this year, that’s been $677.63 in additional fee support.

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Fee Waiver/Fee Support Research

The support fund creates more access to publishing, but obviously it doesn’t get to the root: inaccessible fees and practices at many publishers.

A common thing I hear from publishers is that fee waivers are time-consuming to offer and difficult to administer behind the scenes. I get it and want to keep honoring that, knowing how strapped for time many presses are and knowing personally how much time it takes to handle the Bulletin’s fee support.

The good news is fee waivers are not the only way. The 2024 poetry publishing update highlighted a handful of presses taking new, promising approaches to fee fairness and access.

And yet, over 60% of the poetry book ecosystem is actively excluding poets who can’t afford fees. The work is clear—and bigger than what our mutual aid alone can do.

So I’m reaching out to presses one by one to ask whether and how they offer (or if they’d consider offering) fee support. I’m approaching this in two ways:

• When I receive multiple fee support requests for a contest that doesn’t offer waivers, I reach out to let them know there’s a need. I also alert them that the Poetry Bulletin is covering fees for some of their entries but that we don’t have funds to cover everyone who would like to submit.

• The 2024 poetry publishing update identified the least accessible publishers in a clearer way. I’m prioritizing those as I continue this outreach.

Initial publisher responses + National Poetry Series

The handful of publishers I’ve written so far have either not responded at all or they’ve responded to say, definitively, that they will not offer fee waivers, fee-free periods, or other kinds of access.

The National Poetry Series is the least accessible opportunity on the list, so I reached out to them first. During the pandemic, they raised their fee from $30 to $35, which the coordinator Beth Dial said was done “to generate much needed revenue during a time when fundraising was impossible. It was not a decision reached lightly and it was discussed at length with our board members. We decided that if a higher fee resulted in a significant decrease in submissions, we would revisit it the following year.”

I’m grateful for this transparency and hope it helps others to have it. It’s helpful to know the Series is clear about viewing submission fees as revenue and increases fees (well beyond the rate of inflation) to generate more revenue. 1

The size of the fee increase—$30 to $35—is significant, especially for a reading period that was already one of the most expensive. Beth shared the NPS gets between 1,400 and 1,700 submissions each year. That’s $7,000 to $8,500 in additional revenue—and none of it could be earmarked for fee waivers or a fee-free reading period?

To better understand, I turned to the latest 990 for the National Poetry Series, for the fiscal year ending October 2023:

• The National Poetry Series reports submission fee revenue of $50,610.

• For comparison, in that same year, the Poetry Foundation provided $30,000 of funding to the NPS.

• In fact, our collective of poets is the biggest funder of the National Poetry Series—and arguably its most reliable funder, given the cyclical nature of the contest and how many attempts it takes to get a book accepted by a publisher.

So could we imagine some possibilities here?

What can we do when the least accessible reading period has said it’s not willing to open the gate for excluded, cash-strapped poets?

The National Poetry Series said they will only lower their fees if they get fewer submissions. And this doesn’t speak to the need for fee waivers or other forms of access.

The next submission period for the National Poetry Series begins in January.

There are over 4,000 poets reading this bulletin now. I imagine many of you are already drafting a book to send—and many more are working on a book that you cannot afford to send.

What if we choose solidarity instead of subsidizing the least accessible reading period?

What if those of us who can afford a $35 submission fee spend that money on books or submissions with smaller, less-funded—and often more accessible—presses instead? What if we collectively do that on the deadline day for the National Poetry Series in 2025? 2

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Creative Support: Workshops, Awards & More

If you’re writing and submitting in solidarity with writers facing genocide now, I included tips for researching and vetting organizations in this document. Even a couple minutes of searching Twitter, Substack, or an organization’s website can be clarifying.

• Workshops4Gaza is bringing writers, artists, and educators together to offer online workshops, with all proceeds going to Palestinians in Gaza. They’ve got a handful of upcoming workshops and are looking for more folks to lead workshops.

• put together a hands-on, deep dive into self-publishing a poetry book. I especially loved the care with the cover art… it’s a level of making the process your own that’s so special about self-published books and projects.

• Mizna has launched Uncrafted, a column that “delves into the political + craft lessons offered by anti-colonial literary lineages.”

• Cave Canem is launching a new research project, “Magnitude and Bond: A Field Study on Black Literary Arts Service Organizations.” You can sign up here to get updates.

• July 29 — Midwest Culture Bearers Award

• August 1 — Granum Foundation Prizes “to help U.S.-based writers complete substantive literary works—such as poetry books, essay or short story collections, novels, and memoirs—or to help launch these works.”

• August 15 — Arc Poetry is seeking a Canadian poet to be their next virtual poet-in-residence.

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Upcoming Deadlines

• Between now and early August, there’s one press signed on to PACBI that has an open reading period: Mason Jar Press and its 1729 Book Prize in Poetry, but they’ve already hit their submissions cap.

• Sundress Publications has an open reading period for full-length poetry books now and has been vocal and concrete (e.g., a microgrant) in supporting Palestinian writers, although PACBI isn’t mentioned in their posts or on their site.

PACBI isn’t the last word on or only form of solidarity, but it’s a place to begin. If you’re submitting in solidarity with writers facing genocide now, in Palestine and elsewhere, it’s a way to find presses that are more likely to share your values in spirit and in practice. Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza both have lists of presses committed to PACBI. I hope more presses get clear on this and sign on to PACBI following the ICJ ruling last week.

There are about 10 deadlines for full-length poetry books between now and mid-August. The full spreadsheet of upcoming manuscript deadlines is available here.

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing or want to share a resource, please leave a comment.

Hey poets — thank you to everyone who responded with kindness and good thoughts to last month’s bulletin. I haven’t been able to reply to all of you yet, but I’m trying, at least to say thanks.

Many of you responded in solidarity, and some folks sent me words/reframes that I didn’t know I needed. Language that steadied and surprised me, in a good way… which I guess I’m mentioning here just as an appreciation for how checking in with each other, affirming each other, saying some version of “you’re not alone” or “we’ve got this” really does matter.

As challenging as these recent months have been, there has also been so much witnessing and meeting each other with intention and clarity. Yesterday wrote about how relieving this clarity is: “You don’t realize how relieving this is. How relieving each time it is to just know or gain clarity on someone’s politics and where they actually stand.”

I hope that as you make your refusals, as you sacrifice something (relationships, institutional support, publishing opportunities, you name it) for the sake of solidarity, as you name genocide in Palestine, Sudan, Congo… you also get to feel that relief of clarity, of recognizing the others who are in the work with you.

That might read like a string of platitudes (why does email seem to have that effect?) but I mean it in a real, concrete way. I hope we keep finding each other. I hope this time keeps changing us, and changing who/what holds power and influence in our creative spaces. I hope we are relieved of false promises, prestige-seeking, gatekeeping… that’s always been part of this work with the Poetry Bulletin, but it has taken on a whole new texture in recent months.

Grateful,

Emily

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Reading Today: No Pride Without Palestine

The Offing, phoebe, and So to Speak are hosting No Pride Without Palestine, a virtual reading today, June 14, at 6:30 pm EST in support of Life for Gaza. Make a minimum $5 donation to the Municipality for Gaza to join in.

In Practice

• in a great interview with the Poetry Project: “Poetry is an insurgent language in that it resists emptying by design. AI is this empty language—it can generate language that can fulfill an assignment, like marketing, or whatever. It’s designed to spit out what your prompts tell it to. It’s been emptied of meaning because no one is producing it. Poetry resists emptying because it itself challenges grammars, and relation.”
  

• with ten reasons to love artist publishing: “I often hear self-publishing being used as a way to diminish work that’s not made through the corporate/industrial publishing process, usually by trying to indicate it’s lower quality or made by just one person. But often artist-initiated publishing has collaborators, influences, and so much is higher quality and has more spark and zing to it. And takes more interesting shapes than what’s allowed in the corporate world.”
  

• Appreciated the chance to tussle more with the concept of “literary citizenship,” thanks to this conversation between Alina Stefanescu and Karan Kapoor… I’ve always gotten too much of the “loyal soldier” vibe from the phrase. I’d rather be a fool than a citizen.
  

• More on artist publishing and zines. Have you turned your poetry into a zine? Would you be open to sharing about the process? Let me know.

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Creative Support: Fellowships & More

If you’re writing and submitting in solidarity with writers facing genocide now, I included tips for researching and vetting organizations in this document. Even a couple minutes of searching Twitter, Substack, or an organization’s website can be clarifying.

• wants to interview debut poets about the journey of publishing a first book.

• Workshops4Gaza is bringing writers, artists, and educators together to offer online workshops, with all proceeds going to Palestinians in Gaza. They’ve got a handful of upcoming workshops and are looking for more folks to lead workshops.

• June 24 — The Rural Regenerator Fellowship is open for applications from writers and artists in the Upper Midwest.

• June 30 — The FSG Writer’s Fellowship is open for submissions.

• July 3 — The Poetry Coalition is open for applications to its fellowship program.

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Upcoming Deadlines

These are upcoming poetry book deadlines with publishers that have signed on to PACBI:

• June 30 - Poetry Northwest - Possession Sound Poetry Series (with a free submission period for BIPOC writers)

• June 30 - River River Books (full-length) (sliding scale/pay what you can submission fees)

• July 15 - Diode Editions (chapbook and full-length — Diode has also lowered their fees and they’re offering fee waivers. Love to see it!)

There are about 15 deadlines for full-length poetry books between now and mid-July. The full spreadsheet of upcoming manuscript deadlines is available here.

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have ideas, updates to a publisher’s listing, or want to share a resource, say hello by replying to this note.

Hey poets — this bulletin is late, because I’ve been spending time with family, walking in the woods with my dad, stopping for trilliums whenever we find them. We recently found out he has cancer, and the most honest thing I can say is that when he’s not well, I’m not well… We’re sorting out what this means in the near-term, and I’m listening for where my attention is needed right now… my dad and I very close, very much the same kind of restless/intense/heart-out-there person. Much of what I do here comes from that space, and now I’m struggling a lot to find words… even writing this feels clumsy, but I want to be honest with you all about where I’m at.

I’m taking longer to respond to things right now, so if you’re reaching out for anything related to a deadline—especially submission fee support—please leave extra time for my reply. If you can, try to reach out at least a week before your deadline.

Another update is that I’ve ended my affiliation with Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA), also known as the Amherst writing method. I’ve been part of AWA since 2015, and many of you joined the bulletin through that work, so I wanted to let you know. I’ve been engaged with AWA for months about supporting Palestinian writers, releasing a statement, etc. I didn’t volunteer a session for the May fundraiser, “Write Around the World,” because I was waiting for more clarity. My understanding is a message might be forthcoming, but when the promotions for “Write Around the World” came out and offered no message or support to writers facing genocide, I decided to withdraw from the organization.

Like I’ve said before, I feel it’s important for organizations that claim to offer safe or “freeing” spaces for writers to be clear now, and to speak to and support writers who are directly affected. With AWA, I had also hoped for/offered to support a teach-in or other gathering for leaders of the Amherst method, so we could support each other and get more equipped to meet this moment in our workshops. I realize this is just one idea of what might be helpful now, and I’m just one voice relating to the method this way… but this kind of work is a big part of why I was pulled to AWA in the first place, and to me, it’s at the heart of AWA’s origins—for instance, in Writing Alone & With Others, Pat Schneider (the founder of AWA) devotes a chapter and many workshop examples to writing as a political act and the harms of silence.

Even with those roots, one curious thing I found throughout nine years with AWA: people sometimes confuse the gentleness of this writing method with neutrality or apoliticalness.

When I raised money for Standing Rock or talked about the shooting in Christchurch or said Black Lives Matter, there were always writers who responded with some version of, “I thought you were my writing coach. I thought this was a safe space. Why are you making this political?”

Every time, I figured out a little more about what clarity means (to me) in practice, and every time I went back to Pat’s writing about silence. But what really started to bother me in all this is the assumption that a gentle method couldn’t (or shouldn’t) possibly have anything to do with politics, with justice, with change. What bothers me is when people act like I’ve tricked them: I thought you were gentle, so I wouldn’t have to think about those other things here!

Gentleness! If gentleness and tenderness are not the someday-fruits of these so-called politics, then what is? It’s work like Pat’s that reminds me that true gentleness is not a distraction from—it can be a way into better possibilities. As long as we call each other in to create those possibilities. As long as our gentle methods also refuse silence.

The future in my imagination is so gentle, so tender—and safer, and freer, because of it. It is like all the fathers I’ve watched holding their children in Gaza, so tender. It is like my own father playing the song that makes us both cry, because he knows when we both need to cry now. I want a future just like that—so tender and so gentle, it makes anything else feel like a half-world.

emily

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New Resource

Chiara Di Lello and I are working on a document of upcoming deadlines with publishers in solidarity with Palestinians. I’m updating it more this week. This pulls from a variety of sources (noted in the doc) and focuses on active/upcoming deadlines. It’s time-consuming to navigate PACBI lists or Twitter threads and figure out who’s actually open for submissions, so the intent was just to remove a little administrative burden.

Go to the document

This is not meant to speak over or duplicate anyone’s work, and it may change as needs change. It was created after a few Palestinian writers reached out to me about gathering deadlines following last month’s bulletin. I’m just trying to listen to needs when they pop up now, especially if I’m asked directly about something. If you have feedback or additions for this doc, please let me know!

I’m also still hoping and/or Duotrope will create an option to sort listings on their sites for publishers that have committed to PACBI. I know PACBI is just one piece, but it would be a start. Do you know someone on these teams to ask about this? Could you drop them a note?

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Upcoming Deadlines

These are upcoming poetry book and chapbook deadlines with publishers that are in solidarity with Palestine:

• May 31 - Sundress Publications (chapbook) (waivers for all BIPOC writers)

• May 31 - Broken Sleep Books (full-length)

• June 30 - Poetry Northwest - Possession Sound Poetry Series (with a free submission period for BIPOC writers)

• June 30 - River River Books (full-length) (sliding scale/pay what you can submission fees)

• July 15 - Diode Editions (chapbook and full-length)

There are about a dozen deadlines for full-length poetry books between now and mid-June. The full spreadsheet of upcoming manuscript deadlines is available here.

Blue sky grief is a different breed: natural causes
& old age; diseases acquired from a life lived,
if not lived well. Our sky grief is a night ablaze
with rockets, eardrums throbbing, windows
rattling, & tent flaps clapping from the blast.

—from “ekphrastic under a bombed-out sky” by Mandy Shunnarah

On the way

• An update on submission fee support, which has been very active this year. I’m doing my best to keep up and chip in extra as I’m able, but the requests continue to outpace the available funds. Thanks to paid subscribers for your support here!

• I’m starting to commission (although I don’t love the word commission?? invite?? make space for??) some special posts by fellow poets for the Poetry Bulletin, which has been a goal for awhile, to bring more voices into the mix here. This will be a paid opportunity, and I’ll share more soon.

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard. If you have ideas, updates to a publisher’s listing, or want to share a resource, say hello by replying to this note.

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