Submissions

SUBMISSIONS

UPDATED on April 4, 2013

See below for five ways to submit your work to Kore Press.

Open Submissions and Short Fiction Award submissions periods are closed as of April 30th.

Thank you to all who submitted!

Thank you to the 2012 Open Submissions editorial team!

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Submissions

1. Open Submissions Period

Kore Press accepts submissions for full-length books during our annual open submission period each January through April. 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 March 31 (or through the end of AWP 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 especially interested in work that is genre-bending, innovative and 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 non-refundable 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; please let us know in the comments section, however, if your work is also submitted elsewhere. 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.Nikky Finney selected Jen McClanaghan's River Legs as the 2013 winner. 2014 contest deadline is August 2013. Click here for more information and to review the full contest deadlines.

3. Short Fiction Award

2013 judge is Kate Bernheimer. Karen Brennan selected Mary Byrne's "A Parallel Life" for the 2012 Short Fiction Award, and Antonya Nelson selected The Death of Carrie Bradshaw by Patricia Grace King as the 2011 Award Winner. See the full 2012 results on the Kore homepage and the 2011 results (including information on the judge, winner, book, and runner-ups) here. 2010 results here and 2009 results here. The 2013 contest is currently OPEN through April 30, 2013. Click here to submit, and click here to review the full contest guidelines.

4. Online Essay or Blog

Write a blog entry for Persephone Speaks or a profile of a remarkable writer and email it to lisal@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, gender bias in the literary world, the intersections of race and gender feminisms, 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 5,000 readers.

5. Poetry in Translation Award

Yasuko Claremont won the first Kore Press Jeremy Ingalls Poetry in Translation Contest with her poem "Concealment" by Tada Chimako, selected by Sawako Nakayasu. There is no Poetry in Translation contest scheduled.

Click here to read a 2007 interview with publisher Lisa Bowden and

former fiction editor Shannon Cain, originally published in

Poetry Contest Insider.

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, but if you include images as an integral part of your work, please contact us direct to discuss. 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!

2013 First Book Award judged by Nikky Finney