Sometimes serendipity leads you by the hand, and that was the case this morning. We weren”t looking for a poetry market when we visited Tupelo Press, the publisher of our Wedenesday”s Poet, Patricia Fargnoli”s latest book, but that”s just what we found. Most of the year, Tupelo Press does not accept submissions other than to their poetry contest and award series. Once a year, though, they hold an open reading month – next month, July. That means that if you have a manuscript of 48-80 pages of poetry, you”ve got a month to polish it up and get it ready for submission.

Tupelo Press is a not-for-profit literary press whose books have won numerous awards. Their open reading month last year yielded four books of poetry to which they committed.

From their submissions page:

Throughout July, Tupelo Press will have an open submissions period for book-length poetry collections (48-80 pages), short story collections, novellas, and up to 80 pages of a novel, if accompanied by a summary of the entire book. (If we”re interested in reading more, we”ll ask you to send the rest).

Please keep in mind that this is not a contest and manuscripts submitted during our open submission period are not read anonymously. We hope to find manuscripts we love and want to publish, but understand, please, that Tupelo Press is under no obligation to publish any of the manuscripts submitted during our open submission period. That said, last year Tupelo Press committed to four poetry manuscripts and one book of fiction.

All manuscripts will be read and all decisions made by the editors of Tupelo Press only. We will use no interns or outside readers. For bios of Tupelo Press editors, please see the editor”s page. Jeffrey Levine, Editor-in-Chief of Tupelo Press will read each and every poetry manuscript submitted. This year, every poetry submission will receive a short critique.

For more details, see the Tupelo Press submissions page and entry guidelines