Submissions

Listed below are our current open calls. We are open for our chapbook contests from March to May, our open reading period for full-length poetry manuscripts from June to August, our broadside contest from September to November, and our open reading period for prose manuscripts from December to February. Our residency applications are open year-round. Other calls will be published here as they open.

Sundress Publications Now Open for 2024 Broadside Contest

Deadline: November 30, 2024

Sundress Publications is pleased to announce that we are now open for submissions for our annual poetry broadside contest. The contest will be open for submission between September 1st to November 30th, 2024.

The winner’s poem will be letterpress-printed as an 8.5” x 11” broadside complete with custom art and made available for sale on our online store. The winner will receive $200 and 20 copies of their broadside.

To submit, send up to three poems, no longer than 28 lines each (line limit includes stanza breaks but not the title) in one Word or PDF document in each submission slot on the Google Form by November 30, 2024. Be sure to include a copy of your payment receipt or purchase order number (see below for payment of fees).

Please make sure that no identifying information is included in the submitted poems.

From September 1st through 14th, submissions to this contest are free for the first submission for any and all writers. If you submit more than one set of poems during the free period, only the first set will be accepted without payment.

Beginning September 15th, the reading fee is $10 per batch of three poems, though the fee will be waived for entrants who purchase or pre-order any Sundress title. Entrants can place book orders or pay submission fees at our store.

Once the purchase is made, the store will send a receipt with a purchase code. This code should be included in the submission, or you may forward the email receipt at the same time as you send the submission. This fee is waived for all writers of color.

Previously published material is welcome so long as you maintain the rights to the work. Let us know in your cover letter if any of your submitted poems have been previously published. Poems 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; poems accepted for publication are still qualified provided the author retains the rights to the work at the time of printing.

The judge for this year’s contest is Ashley Hajimirsadeghi. Ashley Hajimirsadeghi is an Iranian American multimedia artist, journalist, and writer from Baltimore, Maryland. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, U.S. State Department, University of Arizona, and Brooklyn Poets. From 2024-2025, she will be in Kolkata, India creating ethnographic and documentary poetry around climate change, migration, and India’s Chinatowns through an arts-based Fulbright-Nehru Open Research Award. She received her M.A. in Global Humanities from Towson University, and a Bachelor of Science in International Trade & Marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her creative poems, essays, and fiction have appeared in Passages North, Salt Hill, Salamander, and The Journal, among others. Previously, she was a film & television critic at MovieWeb. Find her at www.ashleyhajimirsadeghi.com // Instagram: @nassarine

Submit your poems here!

Any questions or concerns, as well as withdrawal notifications, can be sent sundresscontest@gmail.com.

Sundress Academy for the Arts Open for Spring 2025 Residencies

Deadline: February 1, 2025

Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is now accepting applications for short-term writing residencies in all genres—poetry, fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, screenwriting, journalism, academic writing, and more—for their summer residency period which runs from May 12th to August 16th, 2025. These residencies are designed to give artists time and space to complete their creative projects in a quiet and productive environment.

Each farmhouse residency costs $300/week, which includes a room of one’s own, as well as access to our communal kitchen, bathroom, office, and living space, plus wireless internet. Residencies in the Writers Coop are $150/week and include your own private dry cabin as well as access to the farmhouse amenities. Because of the low cost, we are rarely able to offer scholarships for Writers Coop residents.

Residents will stay at the SAFTA farmhouse, located on a working farm on a 45-acre wooded plot in a Tennessee “holler” perfect for hiking, birdwatching, and foraging. The farmhouse is also just 20 minutes from downtown Knoxville, an exciting and creative city that is home to a thriving arts community. SAFTA is ideal for writers looking for a rural retreat with urban amenities.

We are dedicated to supporting the diversity in the literary community. As part of our commitment to anti-racist work, we use a reparations payment model for our farmhouse residencies which consists of the following:

  • 3 reparations weeks of equally divided payments for Black and/or Indigenous identifying writers at $150/week
  • 3 discounted weeks of equally divided payments for writers of color at $250/week
  • 6 equitable weeks of equally divided payments at $300/week

Black and/or Indigenous identifying writers are also invited to apply for a $350 support grant to help cover the costs of food, travel, childcare, and/or any other needs while they are at the residency. We are currently able to offer two of these grants per residency period (spring/summer/fall). If you would like to donate to expand this funding, you may do so here.

For the 2024 Summer residency period, SAFTA will be offering the following fellowships only:

  • Black & Indigenous Writers Fellowship: one full fellowship for Black and/or Indigenous identifying writers
  • Writers of Color Fellowships: one full and one 50% fellowships for writers of color

The application deadline for the summer residency period is February 1, 2025.

The application fee is waived for all BIPOC identifying writers. For all fellowship applications, the application fee will also be waived for those who demonstrate financial need; please state this in your application under the financial need section.

Sundress Reads Looking for Recently Published Books to Review

Deadline: Rolling

As part of Sundress’ Publications’ ongoing commitment to service and the importance of highlighting work from other small presses, we are now accepting submissions for consideration for inclusion in our review series, Sundress Reads. We’re looking to feature reviews for any books published or to be published in 2023 or 2024.

We at Sundress champion writers whose work highlights human resilience and challenges misconceptions. We will not consider reviewing any book that promotes actions or includes language that contribute to oppression. Books by authors from LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, neurodivergent, disabled, immigrant, incarcerated, and otherwise marginalized communities are encouraged to submit. Recent titles we’ve reviewed include Alicia Mountain’s Four in Hand (BOA Editions), Teow Lim Goh’s Faraway Places (Diode Editions), and Noreen Ocampo’s Not Flowers (Variant Literature).

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. Books must be published by independent presses, university presses, or small presses; we do not accept submissions from “the Big 5” or self-published collections. Submissions will be considered on a rolling basis.

Find out more here.