THE OPEN CALL

Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC (SwEP) is hosting a chapbook open call to find some fresh work and new voices. With over 70 publications under our belt, SwEP works hard to represent our authors and create publications of which our authors are proud. Please visit our website and check out some of our publications to see if we are a good fit for your writing, then polish up your best pieces to submit.

From our submissions, our guest judges will choose three chapbooks for publication. All our publications include an ISBN, Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC contract, and creative control over cover and production (including release date, cover artwork). For more information on what SwEP provides its authors or to see a general contract, please contact us.

There will not be a ranking system for chosen submissions (1st place, 2nd place, etc), instead, our judges will choose three (3) to publish. All three chosen publications will receive the same award of 25 author copies.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

SwEP is seeking previously unpublished manuscripts of poems 25-75 pages in length. We are looking for well-crafted, visceral and daring material. We are looking for diverse voices and are particularly interested in poetry that promotes an innate intersectionality of social issues and a deep respect for humanity. We like our poetry achingly raw and true to who YOU are as a writer. We have a goal of promoting marginalized voices and those who are most often overlooked. If you feel your work doesn’t have a place to ‘fit,’ it may be perfect for us.

Open to writers worldwide, the open call is facilitated as a blind submission process via SwEP Submissions Manger. Additionally, only submitted will be considered for further SwEP publications and features. Even if our judges don’t choose your manuscript, you must submit to be considered by SwEP.

HINTS

• Get to know our press to make sure we are a good fit for you and your publication goals. Explore our website, stalk our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, order some of our publications, review our works on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads.
• Send your best work. Make sure your collection is complete, edited, and polished before hitting the submit button. The more polished it is, the more likely it will chosen for publication.
• Follow the submission guidelines.
• We insist on blind submissions. If you submit a manuscript with your name on it, it will not be sent to the judges and automatically disqualified.

HOW TO SUBMIT

Swimming with Elephants Publications accepts submissions and payment of the entry fee ($25) exclusively through our online submission manager, Submittable. We are not able to accept submissions via email or postal mail. The submission fee is strictly to cover the price of production and pay our guest judges for their time and hard work. To learn more about why we charge a submission fee, click here.

All entries are read blind. All manuscripts should include a title page (listing only the title of the collection). Manuscripts should be paginated and formatted in an easy-to-read font such as Times New Roman. (More creative fonts may be incorporated during production.)

Identifying information for the author should not be included anywhere on the manuscript itself, including in the name of your file or in the “title” field in Submittable. Please include a brief bio and your publication goals in the cover letter on Submittable, which will be made accessible to the editorial panel only after the Finalist manuscripts have been chosen. It is important to include your publication goals. We are a small press and have limited abilities. If your goals are outside of our abilities, we will let you know.

Simultaneous submissions are acceptable and encouraged, but please notify us by withdrawing your manuscript from Submittable immediately if it is accepted for publication elsewhere.

Multiple submissions (the submission of more than one manuscript to the open call) are permitted. A separate submission fee is required for each submission.

OUR 2020 GUEST JUDGES

SaraEve Fermin (she/her) is a performance poet and epilepsy/mental health advocate from northeast New Jersey. A 2015 Best of the Net nominee, she has performed for both local and national events, including the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles 2015 Care and Cure Benefit to End Epilepsy in Children, as a reader for Great Weather for MEDIA at the 2016 NYC Poetry Festival on Governors Island, and in 2019 was a part of the viral #FreeChurroProject. A poetry editor, contributing blogger, and book reviewer, her work can be found or is forthcoming in GERM Magazine, Words Dance, Rising Phoenix Press, Great Weather for MEDIA’s Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea, and Homology Lit, among others. Her first full length poetry anthology, You Must Be This Tall to Ride, was published by Swimming with Elephants Publishing in 2016 and her follow up, View from the Top of the Ferris Wheel, was publish by Clare Songbird Publishing House in 2017. Her third book of poetry, Trauma Carnival, was released in March 2019 (Swimming with Elephants Publications). She believes in the power of foxes, hair dye and living #furiouslyhappy. She loves Instagram and follows back: @SaraEve41

Kat Heatherington was delighted to join the SwEP Parade in Fall 2017 with the publication of The Bones of This Land (available from amazon.com), which was the first-place winner in the chapbook open call that year. As a guest judge for 2019, she is looking forward to reading a wonderful variety of poetry, ideas and styles. She has been writing her whole life, and performing and publishing poetry for longer than she wants to think about. She lives in Sunflower River intentional community south of Albuquerque. Kat can be found online at sunflowerriver.org, and on instagram at @yarrowkat (photography) and @sometimesaparticle (poetry).

Zachary Kluckman, the National Poetry Awards 2014 Slam Artist of the Year and 2015-2016 Slam Organizer of the Year is a Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Gold Medal Poetry Teacher, Red Mountain Press National Poetry Prize recipient and a founding organizer of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change program, now recognized as the largest poetry reading in history. Kluckman has appeared multiple times at the National and Individual World Poetry slams and tours the nation as a spoken word artist. Recently he was one of 3 poets invited to represent the United States at the Kistrech International Poetry Festival in Kenya. He previously served as Spoken Word Editor for Pedestal magazine and has authored two poetry collections; The Animals in Our Flesh, Red Mountain Press 2012 and Some of It is Muscle, Swimming With Elephants Publications 2014.