Writer's Submission Guidelines

First, to put to rest one of the most commonly asked questions about submitting to Anhinga Press: We do not accept unsolicited submissions via e-mail. This includes sample poems as well as complete manuscripts. With that understanding...

Anhinga Press publishes only full-length collections of poetry (usually 60-80 pages), no individual poems or chapbooks. We are always open to reading manuscripts. There is nothing that we are inherently prejudiced toward or against; we are looking for the best poetry out there.

However, for the sake of your peace of mind (and perhaps your sanity), you should do some homework first. Start by reading some of the poems from the books here on our Web site to see if your work is comparable in quality, and perhaps style, to some of the poetry we have published. Read the biographical and other notes about each poet, and compare that information with your own. We are probably not a press for beginners (in the sense of "never had any poetry published before," regardless of how long you may have been writing it), for subjects of local or limited interest, or for private and/or overly sentimental work.

You should know that the odds are not good. We usually publish three to four books a year:

• one is the winner of the Robert Dana Prize for Poetry;
• one is a volume of the Van K. Brock Florida Poetry Series (please see that page for details on submission schedules);
• one is the winner of the Levine Prize in Poetry; and
• only one, if any, is an "open slot" on our publication schedule per year.

For this reason, we reject far, far more unsolicited manuscripts than we accept. In fact, we reject about 98% of the work that is submitted to us.

If all of these dire warnings have not daunted your spirit, and if after looking at some of the poems on our Web site, you think that Anhinga Press might be interested in your manuscript, please send us a query letter and a ten-page sample (not the full manuscript!). Send this material BY MAIL to:

Anhinga Press
PO Box 3665
Tallahassee FL 32315

Please include a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) for our response. (Remember that if you want the sample returned, your SASE should include sufficient postage for that as well as for our reply.) To repeat the main restriction: No e-mail samples please.