Submissions

SUBMISSIONS

There are five ways to submit your manuscript to Kore Press.

Click here for our online submission system

Please be sure to send Word documents only (.doc & .rtf) or Pdfs. No .docx files.

If you have any questions, please email. Do not leave questions in the comments section of the Submission Manager as they will not be answered right away. Thank you!

1. First Book Award: Poetry

2010 winner is Laura Newbern for "Love and the Eye." Claudia Rankine was the judge. First BookAwd is for a poetry manuscript in English by a woman who has not yet published a full-length book. Bhanu Kapil is the judge for 2011. Next contest deadline is August 31, 2010. See full guidelines.

2. First Annual Jeremy Ingalls

Poetry in Translation Award

Yasuko Claremont is the winner. Sawako Nakayasu was the judge.

See full guidelines here.

3. Short Fiction Award

2010 winner is Heather Brittain Bergstrom for "All Sorts of Hunger." Leslie Marmon-Silko was the final judge.

See the full 2010 Results here. See the full 2009 results here.

2011 contest deadline is October 31, 2010. See full guidelines here.

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. Open Submissions Period

We will respond to all submissions by the end of June 2010.

The editors at Kore Press will accept submissions for full-length books during our open submission period each January. 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 January 31st, of each year, 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 staff time required to review and respond individually to manuscripts, we charge a reading fee of $40, 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. Guest Poetry Editors, Publisher Lisa Bowden, or Fiction Editor Shannon Cain will respond personally with a letter offering a short critique. 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 collection of short stories, submit an excerpt: 2 or 3 stories, 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.