JLRB Preſs

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• Our Submission Guidelines

  • You must submit
  • You may submit
  • You must not submit

Submissions are currently closed. To stay up to date with our open submission periods, subscribe to our newsletter.

Our Editorial Practices

During open submission periods, we strive to ack­now­ledge each submission within 2 business days and to respond with­in 4 business weeks.

Unlike almost every other imprint, we respond to every submis­sion—that abides by our sub­mis­sion guide­lines—with specific feedback. We also en­sure that each editor works on only one sub­mission at a time.

Editors begin by reading a meaningful portion of your sub­mission closely. Then, one of two things hap­pens:

• If the editors decide that your manuscript needs a signi­ficant amount of work, they res­pond with a brief, de­tailed summary and ex­plain what you can do to improve your manu­script.
• If the editors consider your submission ready (or partial­ly ready) for publication, they begin to review it.
  • Anthology submissions: Your editor contacts you by email to discuss any necessary re­vi­sions
  • Feature collection manuscripts: Your editor schedules a free, 1-hour consultation to dis­cuss your ma­nuscript

Jump to the submission guidelines

Frequently Asked Questions

• What writing matters most to you?
  🖋️ We celebrate all forms of poetry. How­ever, we pub­lish only works that make use of non-aleatory, re­pre­sen­ta­tion­al textuality and poetic musicality. We con­sider only ma­nu­scripts that maintain a firm com­mit­ment to po­etic technique. (Confused? Our sub­mis­sion guide­lines explain exactly what we look for.)
• Who is eligible to submit?
  • 🌎 We’re based in Canada but we accept sub­missions from all over the world. (Cer­tain terms and con­ditions are different for authors outside of Canada.)
  • 🏳️‍🌈 We respect all authors. However, in line with our com­mitment to intersectional up­lift­ing of queer, trans­gender, women’s, neu­ro­divergent, and emerging voi­ces, JLRB Press submissions are open only to:
    • Women (both transgender and cisgender)
    • Men (only transgender)
    • All gender-diverse humans (including but not limited to non-binary, agender, bi­gen­der, and genderfluid folks)

    Why We Set This Boundary
    We reserve the right to protect our peace. In part be­cause our prior emphasis on the writ­ings of queer, cis­gender men has led to critical im­ba­lan­ces in re­pre­sen­ta­tion—which we’re act­ive­ly work­ing to cor­rect—and in part be­cause of persistent patterns of en­ti­tled refusal to re­work manuscripts sub­stan­ti­al­ly, the ex­ploi­ta­tion of our unpaid la­bour, and the per­va­sive harm to our readers that we’ve had to weed out pain­sta­king­ly, as of August 1, 2025, JLRB Press no longer accepts submissions from cisgender men. If this feels like a ra­dical de­ci­sion, we in­vite you to sit with the question why.

• How do you advocate for author equity?
  • 🙈 Whenever you submit a manuscript, our Chief Edi­tor anonymizes all submissions for blind review. We ne­ver share the details of your submission with anyone out­side of our editorial board. To learn how we keep your da­ta safe, see our Privacy Policy.
  • 📚 To encourage emerging voices, we ac­cept sub­mis­sions from:
    • Authors with at least one published feature poetry col­lec­tion: Only an­tho­lo­gy sub­mis­sions
    • Authors with individual poems pub­lished only in pe­ri­o­di­cals and an­tho­lo­gies: Both anthology sub­mis­sions and fea­ture po­et­ry collection manuscripts
  • ⏰ In service of fairness to all sub­mit­ters, we in­vite those who have already sent in their poems to wait to re­submit their re­vised work as follows:
    • Anthology submissions: Two weeks (if time re­mains be­fore the end of the submission period), or during the next submission period
    • Feature collection manuscripts: During the next sub­mis­sion period
• Do you have any criteria specific to feature col­lec­tion manuscripts?
  • 📑 We ac­cept col­lections of individual po­ems, long-form poems, or a com­bination of the two.
  • 📏 We define a poetry chapbook as a manu­script ap­pro­ximately 3,000–6,000 words long and a poetry book as a manu­script ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6,000–10,000 words long.
  • 📕 All our initial agreements are for the pub­lication of a soft­cover (6″ × 9″ pa­per­back) book. We publish certain books in hard­cover or in e-book for­mats at our own dis­cre­tion. We don’t publish audio­books.
• How do you support authors and the poetry community?

  A Little About Our Principles
  From its inception, JLRB Press has been an entirely self-sufficient organization. Folks are often surprised to learn that our primary ob­jec­tive actually…isn’t publishing books—but rather help­ing our authors grow. We also firmly believe that the phrase published author has everything to do with finding and reaching an audience and nothing to do with creating a commercially suc­cess­ful product (poetry isn’t a product). However, despite the highly com­pe­ti­tive independent publishing market and sales proceeds disproportionate to investment of our own energy, time, and money, we have made a commitment to support fellow auth­ors and kindred organizations and busi­nes­ses in the following ways.

  • 💵 We reward our authors in proportion to the scope of their work
    • Anthology submissions: Contributors re­ceive a copy of the book in which their work appears, as well as some JLRB Press goodies
    • Feature collection manuscripts: Authors receive an advance against future ro­yal­ties: $50 for poetry chapbooks and $100 for poetry books
  • 📖 We encourage both authors and read­ers by standing for open ac­cess
    • We have never and will never charge sub­mission fees or reading fees.
    • We have never and will never sell tickets to our talks, workshops, book launches, or readings.
    • After every event or booth day, we give away 2–3 copies of the books that we publish because we want folks to read what we’ve written.
  • 🤝 We contribute to groups simpatico with our con­victions
    • We routinely make both tax-deductible and un­of­fi­cial contributions to or­gan­i­za­tions such as Eavesdrop Magazine, Open Space Victoria, and the Nanaimo Pride Society. With the publication of Be­com­ing: An Anthology of What-If Poems about Women and Womanhood (forth­com­ing in January 2026), we will donate 15% of all book sale proceeds (about $3 from each sale) on a quarterly basis to a charitable or­gan­i­za­tion that benefits wo­men.
    • As of March 3, 2025, our founder Lucía M. Polis began to do all work relating to the creative com­munity pro bono, con­ti­nu­ing to work with or­gan­i­za­tions such as Planet Earth Poetry, Pride in the Word, and Theatre SKAM but returning any and all payment or honoraria for talks or poetic per­for­man­ces. For more in­for­ma­tion, see Why Poets Should not Do Business with Governments.

Our Submission Guidelines

We put together the following submission guide­lines to help authors make the most of our open submission pe­riods.

Submissions are Closed