Resources
From Category:
Favorite Children’s Books: Poetry and Song
Selected by the New York Public Library. Featured titles include And the Green Grass Grew All Around: Folk Poetry from Everyone and X.J. Kennedy's Brats, where "forty-two poems describe a variety of particularly unpleasant children."
chixLIT
Magazine by and for girls ages 7-17, aims at empowering young women by publishing their creative writing and artwork.
Children’s Guide to Poetry
Brief, easy-to-understand discussion of short poetic forms such as the haiku, cinquain, and sonnet, with links to lessons and examples.
Children’s Books on the Disability Experience
The American Library Association has compiled this bibliography of books for young readers that portray emotional, mental, or physical disability experiences, most published between 2000-2008. Visit their website for guidelines for the Schneider Family Book Awards, a free contest honoring an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.
Sheer Poetry
This British website, geared to teachers and students of writing, offers a collection of materials on poetry and poets by contemporary UK authors such as Carol Ann Duffy, Gillian Clarke, and Simon Armitage. Features include interviews, critical essays, study guides, and an online forum. Material for children is well-represented, as are women poets.
Poetry Through the Ages
Poetry Through the Ages, a project of the Institute for Dynamic Educational Development (IDEA), is a free online exhibit that showcases poetic forms and movements from different cultures, with examples and instructions. A special feature of the site is a new poetic form called "node poetry", which breaks the traditional linear flow of a poem into branching clusters of words that the reader can read in different sequences. Drawing its inspiration from synthetic and visual poetry, the form is found exclusively online, and enables readers to take the poet's lines and construct the poem as they explore it.
Peter Elbow, Teacher of Writing Teachers
Dr. Elbow, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts, has come to enjoy substantial influence over the teaching of writing. "Over the years," he tells Critique Magazine, "I've finally concluded that safety in writing is my highest priority.... I must make a classroom where safety happens, but due to the lack of safety in some classrooms, student writers don't take risks; they don't feel safe when they write." Read Dr. Elbow's complete interview.
Online Poetry Classroom
An extensive resource for high school English and Language Arts teachers, sponsored by The Academy of American Poets. Includes thematic lesson plans, essays on teaching, and hundreds of classic poems to teach. National Poetry Map of America lists literary organizations, festivals, presses, bookstores and poets by state. Teacher Forum lets you share ideas with other educators. Get advice on the best ways to teach poetry. Teaching Resource Center page contains links to other valuable resources.
National Education Association Foundation Grants
Grants for educators at US public schools, colleges and universities to improve student literacy, develop new education programs, and retain qualified teachers in high-risk communities.
National Association of Writers in Education
NAWE supports the development of creative writing of all genres and in all educational and community settings throughout the UK. Resources include an annual conference for writing teachers and an online bulletin board of jobs and publication opportunities.
Merlyn’s Pen
The Merlyn's Pen Foundation mentors promising young writers and trains English teachers. Submissions from students in grades 5-12 are accepted for their magazine. The 10+ years of archives include over 1,000 stories, essays and poems. Books, tapes and teacher's guides are available in the store.
In Our Write Minds
Kim Kautzer's blog offers lessons and resources for teaching writing to young people. Useful for schoolteachers and homeschooling parents.
Getting Smart: 35 Sources for Curated Educational Videos
Getting Smart is the blog companion to Tom Vander Ark's book of the same name, about the digital learning revolution. This post gives a list of educational video archives for children and youth, on subjects including biography, math, science, and the arts.
Algonkian Poetry Workshops
Online workshops hosted and supported by the Web del Sol Association. Develop your poetry through exercises and feedback. Professional guidance helps you prepare and place publishable work.
Zephyr Press
Zephyr is a nonprofit press committed to cross-cultural exchange. It publishes American, Russian, Slavic and East Asian poetry and prose. Works of translation are a specialty. Zephyr collaborates with Adventures in Poetry, a small press that began as a mimeographed "little magazine" in 1968. AIP has published Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman.
TinFish Press
An adventurous small press in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Founded in 1995 by Susan M. Schultz, TinFish publishes experimental poetry and prose from the Pacific, including Hawaii, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Australia, California and western Canada. "Tinfish uses recycled materials, including tarpaper, weather maps, proof sheets, and hamburger sleeves to cover its always un-recycled poetry and prose." Bestsellers include Sista Tongue by Lisa Linn Kanae and Living Pidgin: Contemplations on Pidgin Culture by Lee "Da Pidgin Guerilla" Tonouchi. Read an article about TinFish in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
theNewerYork
tNY is interested in new, forgotten, and experimental literary forms of short fiction: aphorisms, flash-fiction, user's manuals, surveys, lists, punctuationless stories, upside down stories, inside out stories, lipograms, faux press releases, fake book reviews, dialogues, scriptcerpts, epigrams, and other absurdities. They publish an annual chapbook-sized anthology, as well as the Electric Encyclopedia of Experimental Literature, a somewhat searchable online collection of unusual flash prose and artwork.
Telling Our Stories Press
This publisher showcases the art of literary personal narratives and encourages storytelling via reflection and self-analysis. They accept submissions of memoirs from 100 words to 50 pages, for inclusion in anthologies or publication as a stand-alone chapbook.
Tachyon Publications
This San Francisco-based small press specializes in science fiction and fantasy, with titles by James Morrow, Thomas M. Disch, Peter S. Beagle, Charles de Lint, and other leading authors in that genre, as well as "steampunk" and "cyberpunk" anthologies.
Squircle Line Press
Founded by award-winning poet and artist Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingde, Squircle Line Press is a boutique press that publishes poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and whatever else strikes their fancy. Their catalog includes a series of illustrated broadsides with text by notable writers such as Dan Chiasson, Dean Young, Ilya Kaminsky, Amy Gerstler, Forrest Gander, Dan Beachy-Quick, Michael Ryan, Steven Cramer, Orlando Menes and John Wilkinson. Visit their website for submission guidelines for poetry prizes honoring Gertrude Stein and Octavio Paz, and anthologies on unique themes like "pincushion cupcake" and "sandwich wallism".
Small Press Database at Poets & Writers
Poets & Writers Magazine offers this free online database featuring submission guidelines for over 100 small literary presses. The database is searchable by name, keyword, genre, openness to simultaneous and electronic submissions, geographic region and more. A very useful service.
Small Beer Press
This independent press based in Western Massachusetts was founded in 2000 by the husband-and-wife team of Gavin Grant and Kelly Link, award-winning authors and editors of The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror anthology series. The press publishes an eclectic mix of magical realist and literary fantasy and science fiction, as well as the Working Writer's Daily Planner, an attractive and useful datebook that includes contest announcements and writing advice.
Salmon Publishing
One of Ireland's leading poetry publishers, Salmon is a standard-bearer in publishing work by women and promoting writers who are outside the literary mainstream.
Rose Alley Press
This small press has a special interest in publishing verse that is attentive to meter and rhyme. Editor David Horowitz has also written several useful guides to marketing your poetry book, available here.
Ragged Sky Press
Ragged Sky Press was founded in 1992 by poet and publisher Ellen Foos of Princeton, NJ, and publishes quality works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. See website for submission guidelines for their themed anthologies. Authors in their catalog include Elizabeth Socolow, Anca Vlasopolos, and Carlos Hernández Peña.
Q Avenue Press
Launched in 2004 by award-winning poet Curtis Bauer, Q Avenue Press publishes hand-bound chapbooks. Editors say, "We are devoted to publishing new writing, whether prose, poetry, or some combination of the two, new translations, and books that incorporate visual art with writing." Titles include 'I take back the sponge cake' by Loren Erdrich and Sierra Nelson, an illustrated poetry chapbook modeled on choose-your-own-adventure novels.
Prism Comics
Prism Comics is a nonprofit organization that supports the creators and readers of LGBT and LGBT-friendly comics and graphic novels. Prism provides networking opportunities for writers, artists, and small publishers to collaborate on new comics and reach a wider fan base. The website includes an online store where indie comics creators can sell their work. They also sponsor the Prism Comics Queer Press Grant to help indie and self-published authors publicize their work.
Peepal Tree Press
Based in Leeds, England, Peepal Tree Press publishes Caribbean and Black British fiction, poetry, literary criticism, memoirs and historical studies. In addition to their catalogue of contemporary authors, their Caribbean Modern Classics Series restores to print essential classic books from the 1950s and '60s.
Octavo Digital Rare Books
High-quality digital reproductions (PDF or CD) of important rare printed works. Catalogue includes medieval illuminated manuscripts, Shakespeare folios and more.
Riverdale Avenue Books
Riverdale Avenue Books now owns the Magnus Books imprint founded in 2010 by LGBT publishing expert Don Weise, which published notable authors such as Urvashi Vaid and Edmund White. Riverdale's other imprints include romance/erotica, science fiction, horror, mystery/thriller, and commercial nonfiction. They were the 2014 BiPublisher of the Year from the Bi-Writers Association.
Little Red Tree Publishing
Little Red Tree Publishing was established in 2006 and is based in New London, CT. Their mission is to produce books that "delight, entertain and educate". Little Red Tree sponsors a first-book award for women poets, and an individual-poems contest with anthology publication for winners and runners-up. Authors in their catalog include Richard Harteis, W.F. Lantry, A.D. Winans, and Diana Woodcock.
Levellers Press
This small press based in Western Massachusetts publishes literary novels and short story collections through its Thornapple Books imprint, and poetry collections through Hedgerow Books. The press has also published nonfiction books relating to local history and progressive social thought. Poets in their catalog include Annie Boutelle, Patricia Lee Lewis, and Anne Love Woodhull. See website for submission guidelines.
Kind of a Hurricane Press
This small press publishes several poetry anthologies a year on various themes, in POD print and e-book formats. Recent themes have included "Barbie in a Blender" and "Poised in Flight". The press also sponsors online journals for different types of poetry.
Kattywompus Press
This small press based in Cleveland Heights, Ohio publishes chapbooks of innovative, contemporary writing in a variety of genres: poetry, a chapbook-length essay collection, a rollicking long prose poem or gaggle of shorter prose poems, a clutch of micro-fictions, one incredible short story, or a chapbook-friendly slice of autobiography, travelogue, art criticism. $15 reading fee. Enter online only. The no-simultaneous-submissions rule is unusual for manuscript submissions, but they promise to respond within four weeks.
Idiots’ Books
Idiots' Books is a Maryland-based indie press that publishes offbeat, satirical illustrated books featuring the work of writer Matthew Swanson and illustrator Robbi Behr. Books are distributed through a subscription service. Titles include 'Dawn of the Fats', billed as "the oft-neglected examination of that special place where funnel cakes and zombiism collide"; 'Ten Thousand Stories', a book whose split pages can be recombined into 10,000 absurd but still grammatical narratives; and 'After Everafter', which gives ten classic fairy tales the same (mis)treatment.
Holy Cow! Press
Founded in 1977, Holy Cow! Press is an independent small press whose mission is to publish the very best collections of Midwest writings and develop an audience for those books regionally and nationally. They have published books of poetry, short fiction, memoirs, novels, plays, children's and young adult titles, biographies and anthologies centered around important themes. Authors in their catalog include Natalie Goldberg, Brenda Ueland, Meridel Le Sueur, Diane Glancy, and Ray A. Young Bear.
Haymarket Books
Chicago-based independent press publishes scholarly and popular nonfiction from a left-wing activist perspective. They also publish the International Socialist Review.
Flying Object
Flying Object is a nonprofit art and publishing organization. Their storefront in Hadley, Massachusetts hosts a variety of literary readings, art exhibits, concerts, and multimedia events. Their Factory Hollow Press and Flying Object imprints publish limited-edition letterpress chapbooks and broadsides, literary fiction and poetry, artists' books, and a print and online journal. Editors say, "We're particularly interested in collaborative and interdisciplinary work of emerging, experimental, and often overlooked artists, writers, and performers that seek to expand the traditional boundaries of a given art-form and to see that work realized through performance and/or publication. We see our storefront as a laboratory for creative development, performance, and publication that encourages both deliberate and chance encounters with the community that supports and engages our organization."
Fish Publishing
This well-regarded Irish literary publisher runs a range of competitions, from poetry and flash fiction to crime, historical fiction, and short stories, with prizes up to 2,500 euros. They also provide a full editorial consultancy service designed to provide writers with one to one, on-going, constructive feedback on their work, whether it is a complete novel or just the beginnings. As of 2012, they also offer an online mentoring service, with pricing based on the manuscript length and duration of the mentoring relationship (3, 6, or 9 months).
Europa Editions
Europa Editions is a New York-based publisher of literary fiction, high-end mystery and noir, children's illustrated fiction, narrative nonfiction, and memoir. Approximately two-thirds of the titles on their list are works of literature in translation. Europa Editions was founded in 2005 by Sandro Ferri and Sandra Ozzola Ferri, who are also the owner-publishers of Rome-based Edizioni E/O, one of Europe's most prestigious independent publishing houses. Europa's Tonga Books imprint publishes literary prose titles with a strong narrative voice, chosen by prominent authors as guest editors.
Etruscan Press
Based in Pennsylvania, Etruscan Press is a nonprofit cooperative of writers producing books that nurture the dialogue among genres, achieve distinctive voice, and reshape our literary and cultural histories. Their catalogue of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism includes the authors H.L. Hix, Paul Lisicky, Carol Moldaw, Bruce Bond, and Kazim Ali.
Ellipsis Press
Ellipsis Press publishes literary novels that are structurally innovative. "We like: novels that look normal but aren’t (more than those that look weird but are actually quite normal); those that are successful at bypassing or evolving the seemingly necessary but often tired elements of character and/or plot; and those that respond in some way to the history of the novel as genre and form. Writers who have studied the traditional elements of the novel and experimented with them to emotionally moving and/or extraordinary ends are invited to submit for publication." Send manuscripts by email.
Dancing Girl Press & Studio
Spawned by the online zine Wicked Alice, DGP seeks to publish work that bridges the gaps between schools and poetic techniques: work that's fresh, innovative, and exciting. The press has published over 90 titles by emerging women poets in delectable handmade editions. The studio also sells art paper, ephemera, and vintage-inspired arts and crafts.
CUE Editions
Based in Tucson, Arizona, CUE Editions is an independent micro-press that specializes in limited-edition, hand-made chapbooks by new and established poets. Authors include Stephanie Balzer and Mark Horosky. Visit website to purchase back issues of Cue: A Journal of Prose Poetry (no longer publishing).
Cozy Classics
Cozy Classics adapts great literature for beginning readers. Each board book by Jack and Holman Wang condenses a classic novel to 12 child-friendly words, illustrated with images of needle-felted dolls in period costume and scenery. By introducing words in the context of a narrative, these books encourage deeper involvement than the vocabulary-list format of the typical infant primer. Parents who are familiar with the original book can elaborate on the story as they read aloud to their child, or use the words and images as prompts for inventing new stories. Quotations, synopsis, and cast of characters for each book are available on the website. The first titles in the series are 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Moby-Dick'.
Cervena Barva Press
This new literary press with connections to the Cambridge, Mass. poetry scene was founded by Gloria Mindock, longtime editor of the Boston Literary Review. Ms. Mindock says, "The press solicits poetry, fiction, and plays from various writers around the world, and holds open contests regularly for its chapbooks, postcards, broadsides and full-length books. I look for work that has a strong voice, is unique, and that takes risks with language. I encourage queries from Central and Eastern Europe." Subscribe to their free monthly email newsletter to read author interviews and find out about upcoming readings and new plays being produced around the country.
Broadsided
Each month, Broadsided selects a poem or flash prose piece from their submissions and invites an artist to create an original "broadside", or poster, featuring that poem. A letter-sized PDF file of the collaboration is posted on their site to be freely downloaded and distributed. You can sign up as a "Vector" and agree to post at least two copies of each month's poems in your local coffee shop, library, bus station, public notice board, grocery store, or other public gathering place. Entries should be submitted by email; send 3-5 poems, maximum 30 lines each, or one prose piece, maximum 300 words, in the body of your message to broadsided@gmail.com. Include a short bio. Previously published work accepted. Past contributors have included Mary Jo Bang, Ilya Kaminsky, G.C. Waldrep, Brian Teare, and Robert Wrigley.
Writing-World.com
Concise tips and essays for writers of all kinds. Now offering a searchable contest database. Essays in the poetry section explore such themes as cowboy poetry, tips on translations, and the form of the triolet. Also provides selected links to poetry resources.
WritersMarket.com
Contact information for thousands of editors and agents. Search by keyword and category. Monthly access is $2.99. Annual access is $29.95, with a 30-day money back guarantee. Includes advice on improving your query letters and answers to common questions. Daily industry updates.
Writers Online Directory of Competitions
Writers Online, a British writing site, posts listings of writing competitions, workshops, and book publishing services in the UK. Their directories are searchable by keyword and by geographic region within the UK and Ireland.
