Sundress Publications is now open to submissions for grant applications from Black and/or Indigenous identifying writers with a chapbook in progress. All eligible authors are welcome to submit during our application period from August 1st to October 31st, 2022.
The Light Bill Incubator Microgrant will award $500, a slot in Sundress’s reading series, a residency at the Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, TN, and the potential for digital publication. This award will go to one Black and/or Indigenous writer with a chapbook in progress, to support the completion of said project.
All applications will be read by members of our editorial board. One writer will be selected, who will then work with Sundress’s reading series coordinator, residency team and editorial board.
Applicants may apply with any genre; however, the proposed project must be chapbook-length, meaning the planned final version should be no more than 48 pages.
To apply, please send a sample of the chapbook in progress along with a brief (no more than 500 words) artist/personal statement. These items should be sent to our editorial board as DOCX or PDF files at sundresspublications@gmail.com. Please include the phrase “Light Bill Incubator Microgrant Application” in the subject line. There is no fee to apply.
As part of Sundress’s ongoing commitment to service, we recognize that COVID-19 has caused hardship by cancelling readings, launches, tours, and other needed promotional efforts. To combat this, Sundress Publications continues to accept submissions for consideration for inclusion in our review series, Sundress Reads. We’re looking to write featured reviews for any books published or to be published from July 2021 to June 2022. We at Sundress hope to champion writers whose work highlights human struggle and challenges misconceptions.
Authors or publishers of books published within this date range are invited to submit books, chapbooks, or anthologies in any genre for consideration by our reviewers who are standing by. Submissions will be considered on a rolling basis.
For immediate consideration, please forward an electronic copy of the book (PDFs preferred), author bio, photo of the cover, and a link to the publisher’s website to sundresspublications@gmail.com with “Sundress Reads: Title” as the subject line. In addition, we request that one print copy be mailed to Sundress Academy for the Arts, ATTN: Sundress Reads, 195 Tobby Hollow Lane, Knoxville, TN 37931.
Submissions to Sundress Reads will remain eligible for selection for one year. Hard copies will become a permanent part of the Sundress Academy for the Arts library and will be made available to SAFTA residents and staff as well as by request to affiliate journals for further reviews.
Doubleback Review is currently seeking submissions for issue 3:2! We are a part of Doubleback Press, a small press specializing in republishing creative works that were originally published by now-defunct journals and presses. Doubleback Review has also had a special edition for conscientiously withdrawn pieces—works that were withdrawn from journals because of harmful behavior from an editor. We are a home for your retired darlings, and we are also committed to uplifting the voices of marginalized creators.
We are open for submissions year-round and accept poetry, short stories, artwork, and more short-form work. Poets should send up to five poems and prose writers should send up to 4,000 words total—one story or essay, or up to three shorter flash pieces—in one document (Word preferred). Please begin each piece on a separate page. Include your name and email address at the top of each page. Below each piece, specify where it was previously published.
Artists may send one high-resolution image in .JPG, .JPEG, .PNG, or .PDF format, up to 25 MB in size. Please include an artist statement and specify where the piece was previously published in the cover letter field.
Sundress Publications is open for submissions of pitches for short anthology projects. Anthologies would be published as part of Sundress’s e-chapbook series in 2021 and would be available for free download on the Sundress website. These anthologies would be limited to 50 pages of content including front and back matter.
All editors are welcome to submit pitches for qualifying projects. We are especially interested in projects helmed by or focused on amplifying the voices of BIPOC, trans and nonbinary writers, and writers with disabilities.
Pitches should be approximately 250 words and include:
Potential authors editors would like to solicit
Example pieces of work to be included
Outline of a plan for editorial process
Why editors believe the anthology is important to the contemporary literary landscape
Editors of selected pitches would solicit and read work for the anthology project with Sundress-backed support in submission curation, contracts, proofing, promotion, and design.
To submit, email your pitch (DOC, DOCX, or PDF) to sundresspublications@gmail.com. Be sure to note both your name and the title of the project in your email header. The deadline for pitches is August 31st, 2020.
We at Sundress hope to champion writers whose work helps to break the stigma of mental health issues and highlights the very human struggles that can lead to thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts, and suicide survivors. We are looking for submissions that challenge the misconceptions surrounding suicide and that work to shed some light the silent struggle.
Authors or publishers of books published in any genre in the past twelve months may submit to The Wardrobe. To do so, please forward an electronic copy of the book (PDFs preferred), author bio, photo of the cover, and a link to the publisher’s website to The Wardrobe’s email with the subject line “Suicide Prevention.” In addition, we request that one print copy be mailed to Sundress Academy for the Arts, ATTN: The Wardrobe, 195 Tobby Hollow Lane, Knoxville, TN 37931.
Submissions to The Wardrobe will remain eligible for this “Best Dressed” selection for one year. Hard copies will become a permanent part of the Sundress Academy for the Arts library and be made available for review by our editors and/or affiliate journals.
For the complete details and rules, please see The Wardrobe website.
Sundress Publications is open for submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts. All authors are welcome to submit qualifying manuscripts during our reading period of May 15 to August 15, 2019.
We’re looking for manuscripts of forty-eight to eighty (48-80) single-spaced pages; front matter is excluded from page count. Individual pieces or selections may have been previously published in anthologies, chapbooks, print journals, online journals, etc., but cannot have appeared in any full-length collection, including self-published collections. Single-author and collaborative author manuscripts will be considered. Manuscripts translated from another language will not be accepted. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but we ask that authors notify us immediately if their work has been accepted elsewhere.
The reading fee is $13 per manuscript, though the fee will be waived for entrants who purchase or pre-order any Sundress title or broadside. We will also accept nominations for entrants, provided the nominating person either pays the reading fee or makes a qualifying purchase. Authors may submit and/or nominate as many manuscripts as they would like, so long as each is accompanied by a separate reading fee or purchase/pre-order. Entrants and nominators can place book orders or pay submission fees at our store.
All manuscripts will be read by members of our editorial board, and we will choose at least two manuscripts for publication. We strive to further our commitment to diversity and seek to encounter as many unique and important voices as possible. We are actively seeking collections from writers of color, trans and nonbinary writers, writers with disabilities, and others whose voices are underrepresented in literary publishing. Selected manuscripts will be offered a standard publication contract, which includes 25 copies of the published book, as well as any additional copies at cost.
This year our top selection from the reading period also will receive a free one-week writing residency at the Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, TN.
To submit, email your Sundress store receipt for submission fee or book purchase, along with your manuscript (DOC, DOCX, or PDF), to sundresspublications@gmail.com. Be sure to note both your name and the title of the manuscript in your email header. For those nominating others for our reading period, please include the name of nominee as well as an email address; we will solicit the manuscript directly.
Although we are conscious of the lack of representation by women writers in literary publishing, we are a non-discriminatory publishing group focused on the creativity of all artists, regardless of race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, education, etc.
A 501(c)3 non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run press that publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats, and hosts numerous literary journals, an online reading series, and the Best of the Net Anthology.
As a part of our mission to extol writers and people of all cultural backgrounds, Sundress Publications is accepting submissions that honor National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15–October 15).
We are looking for work that celebrates the histories, cultures, and contributions of Hispanic and Latinx Americans. National Hispanic Heritage Month works to pay tribute to the ways that Hispanic and Latinx Americans have enriched American culture, and we at Sundress Publications are seeking works that lend a voice to these diverse cultural contributions and histories.
Authors or publishers of books published in the past twelve months may submit to The Wardrobe. To do so, please forward an electronic copy of the book (PDFs preferred), author bio, photo of the cover, and a link to the publisher’s website to The Wardrobe’s email with the subject line “Hispanic Heritage.” In addition, we request that one print copy be mailed to Sundress Academy for the Arts, ATTN: The Wardrobe, 195 Tobby Hollow Lane, Knoxville, TN 37931.
Submissions to The Wardrobe will remain eligible for this “Best Dressed” selection for one year. Hard copies will become a permanent part of the Sundress Academy for the Arts library and be made available for review by our editors and/or affiliate journals.
For the complete details and rules, please see The Wardrobewebsite.
As a part of Sundress Publications’ mission to lift up women in the literary community, we are looking for submissions that honor Women’s Equality Day (August 26).
Women’s Equality Day commemorates the 19th amendment, which gave women a voice in the political arena in the United States for the first time. We at Sundress feel that is important to celebrate how far we’ve come in our fight for equality and to acknowledge how far we still have to go. We’re looking for writers whose work delves into these concepts and adds its own voice to the chorus of struggles and triumphs in the fight for women’s equality.
Authors or publishers of books published in the past twelve months may submit to The Wardrobe. To do so, please forward an electronic copy of the book (PDFs preferred), author bio, photo of the cover, and a link to the publisher’s website to wardrobe@sundresspublications.com with the subject line “Wardrobe Submission: Equality Day.” In addition, we request that one print copy be mailed to Sundress Academy for the Arts, ATTN: The Wardrobe, 195 Tobby Hollow Lane, Knoxville, TN 37931.
Submissions to The Wardrobe will remain eligible for this “Best Dressed” selection for one year. Hard copies will become a permanent part of the Sundress Academy for the Arts library and be made available for review by our editors and/or affiliate journals.
For the complete guidelines, please see the Wardrobe website HERE.
Call for Submissions: The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry
Sundress Publications announces an open submission call for The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry, an anthology that centers the storied, yet perpetually mystifying connection that dogs and humans share with a new focus: the historical and contemporary relationships between poets and dogs.
Reaching beyond a generic celebration of the “dog-owner bond,” The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry will also interrogate and focus it: why (and how) do dogs appear in poets’ poems, and what does it mean to have a dog beside a poet at their writing desk? Why might poets in particular be drawn to dog companionship? This collection will examine both the routine and the unexpected lives we’ve built with our dogs, exploring wildness and domestication, boundaries and freedom, rescue, and grief through poetry centered on the complicated, expansive dog-poet connection. This call takes particular interest in voices and histories not usually centered in this conversation, particularly those that consider the role of the dog-poet bond in relation to disability, queerness, race, gender, age, and more.
Interested poets should submit a cover letter, 3-5 poems, and an optional short (max. 500 words) essay that considers their personal relationship to the anthology’s subject matter. We intend to include these essays alongside chosen poems for each author. Please feel free to interpret the themes of the anthology widely: however best fits you, your work, and your relationship to dogs. We want to be surprised! That said, poems must engage with dogs or dog companionship/ownership in some way (we’re not looking for poems not about dogs). The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2019.
To submit, attach your manuscript as a single DOCX or PDF file to thefamiliarwild@gmail.com. If the poems have been previously published elsewhere and/or simultaneously submitted, please indicate this in your cover letter. We will happily consider previously published poems so long as the poet retains the rights to reprint them.
The poets Ruth Awad and Rachel Mennies will serve as co-editors for this anthology.
Ruth Awad is a Lebanese-American poet and author of Set to Music a Wildfire (Southern Indiana Review Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and the 2018 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She is the recipient of a 2016 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and she won the 2013 and 2012 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize and the 2011 Copper Nickel Poetry Contest. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The New Republic, Pleiades, The Missouri Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
Rachel Mennies is the author of The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards (Texas Tech University Press), the 2014 winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry and finalist for a National Jewish Book Award, and the chapbook No Silence in the Fields (Blue Hour Press). Her writing has recently appeared, or will soon, at The Believer, Kenyon Review, The Poetry Foundation, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago and is a member of AGNI’s editorial staff.
Sundress Publications is extending the deadline for submissions of full-length short story manuscripts. All authors are welcome to submit qualifying manuscripts during our reading period which has been extended to February 1, 2019!
We are looking for manuscripts that are approximately 125–165 double-spaced pages of fiction; front matter does not count toward your page count. Individual stories may have been previously published in anthologies, chapbooks, print journals, online journals, etc., but cannot have appeared in any full-length collection, including self-published collections. Manuscripts translated from another language will not be accepted. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but we ask that authors notify us immediately if their work has been accepted elsewhere.
The reading fee is $15 per manuscript, though the fee will be waived for entrants who purchase or pre-order any Sundress title or broadside. We will also accept nominations for entrants, provided the nominating person either pays the reading fee or makes a qualifying purchase. Authors may submit and/or nominate as many manuscripts as they would like, so long as each is accompanied by a separate reading fee or purchase/pre-order. Entrants and nominators can place book orders or pay submission fees at our store at https://squareup.com/market/sundress-publications.
All manuscripts will be read by members of our editorial board, and we will choose one manuscript for publication in late 2019. We strive to further our commitment to diversity and seek to encounter as many unique and important voices as possible. We are actively seeking collections from writers of color, trans and nonbinary writers, writers with disabilities, and others whose voices are underrepresented in literary publishing. Selected manuscripts will be offered a standard publication contract, which includes 25 copies of the published book, as well as any additional copies at cost.
To submit, email your Sundress store receipt for submission fee or book purchase, send a 20–35 page sample of your manuscript (DOC, DOCX, or PDF), to sundresspublications@gmail.com; this sample can include one story or a number of shorter stories. After our initial selection process, semi-finalists will be asked to send the full collection.
Be sure to note both your name and the title of the manuscript in your email header. For those nominating others for our reading period, please include the name of nominee as well as an email address; we will solicit the manuscript directly.
A 501(c)3 non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is entirely volunteer-run, publishes chapbooks and full-length works in both print and digital formats, and hosts a variety of online journals. Although we are conscious of the lack of representation by women writers in literary publishing, we are a non-discriminatory publishing group focused on the creativity of all artists, regardless of race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, education, etc.
As a part of Sundress’s ongoing commitment to providing a platform for marginalized voices, 
