Submissions

SUBMISSIONS

UPDATED on April 26, 2012

There are five ways to submit your work to Kore Press throughout the year.

Our 2013 First Book Award is now OPEN!

Our 2012 Short Fiction Award & Open Submissions are now closed. Thank you to all authors who submitted work this year.

And thank you to our 2011 Open Submissions editorial team!

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1. Open Submissions Period

A Kore Press editorial panel will accept submissions for full-length books during our open submission period each January and February. The open submissions period is not a contest; manuscripts are not reviewed anonymously. Please understand we are under no obligation to publish any manuscripts we receive during our open submissions period. We expect to publish six to nine titles a year, including our poetry and short fiction contest winner.

Deadline

Manuscripts must be "postmarked" between January 1st and February 28th and submitted electronically.

What we are looking for

We seek book-length manuscripts in poetry, memoir, short fiction, fiction and creative nonfiction, written by women,* that reflect the highest standards of literary quality. We are also interested in work that is genre-bending and/or experimental.

Reading Fee

Kore Press is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. To offset the cost of editorial time required to review and respond individually to manuscripts, we charge a reading fee of $35, payable to Kore Press. No editor receives extra compensation for reading manuscripts. You are welcome to submit as many manuscripts as you like, as long as you send a separate reading fee for each.

Editorial Review

Each submission will be read by our editors. An editorial panel of experts will respond personally with letters offering short critiques. Simultaneous submissions are welcome. If you sent an entry to the poetry or fiction competitions, it is fine to submit the same manuscript during the open submissions period; the review system and the reviewers are different for each process.

What to Submit

For poetry, submit a manuscript via our online submissions system. Poetry submissions should be a minimum of 48 pages and a maximum of 98 pages. For a novel or collection of short stories, submit an excerpt: 2 or 3 stories or chapters, but no more than 50 pages. For a memoir or a work of creative nonfiction, send a one- or two-page synopsis plus the first 50 pages. If we're interested in reading more of your prose, we will ask you to send the rest. Please submit these via our online submissions system. Be sure to include if the work is "prose" or "poetry" in the comments section.

What to include on your manuscript's title page:
• name
• address
• telephone number
• email address
• title of manuscript

• genre

Manuscripts must be:
• submitted online

• accompanied by the appropriate reading fee (Canadian residents add $3 for bank processing fee if submitting in Canadian dollars)

• doublespaced (prose only)
• paginated

• original poetry or prose written by the applicant (unless the work is a translation)

• unpublished at the time of submission (if the manuscript is accepted elsewhere during our deliberation process, please notify us immediately)

• accompanied by a page listing previously published stories or poems, if any.

2. First Book Award for Poetry

The First Book Award is for a poetry manuscript in English by a woman who has not yet published a full-length book. Bhanu Kapil has selected Michelle Chan Brown's Double Agent as the 2011 First Book Award winner. See full 2011 results here. The contest is currently open. Click here for more information and to review the full contest deadlines.

3. Short Fiction Award

Antonya Nelson selected The Death of Carrie Bradshaw by Patricia Grace King as the 2011 Short Fiction Award Chapbook Winner. See the full 2011 results (including information on the judge, winner, forthcoming book, and runner-ups) here (2010 results here and 2009 results here). The 2012 contest is closed. Click here to submit, and click here to review the full contest guidelines.

4. Online Appreciations or Blog

Write a blog entry for Persephone Speaks or a profile of a remarkable writer and email it to lisa@korepress.org with the subject line "Blog" or "Profile." Please read the blog and online appreciations before submitting.

Blog entries on life as a woman writer are especially appreciated, however all topics having to do with women and literature, arts, activism, politics and culture will be considered. Appreciation profiles can be about any female author.

Articles should be between 500 to 1,000 words. Authors will not receive payment. Chosen pieces will be posted on the blog, on the Kore Press website and in our monthly email newsletter, which is sent to over 4,000 readers.

5. Jeremy Ingalls Poetry in Translation Award

Yasuko Claremont won the first Kore Press Poetry in Translation Contest with her poem "Concealment" by Tada Chimako, selected by Sawako Nakayasu. There will be no Poetry in Translation contest in 2012, but stay tuned for future translation opportunities with Kore Press.

Click here to read an interview with publisher Lisa Bowden and

fiction editor Shannon Cain, originally published in

Poetry Contest Insider in 2007.

Submit online here* and if you require further information, please e-mail us.

*Note on our Submissions Manager:

Click here for our online submission system and please be sure to attach only .doc, .rtf, or .pdf files. We do not accept .docx files and will not consider any that are submitted. We also only consider text that is submitted and if you choose to include pictures, they will not be considered at all. Please keep file sizes small. If you have any questions, please email us. Do not leave questions in the comments section of the Submission Manager as they will not be answered right away. Thank you!

First Book Award

for Poetry