All open calls for submissions are listed here. Check back for future open calls and visit gasherpress.com for more information regarding our prizes and open reading periods.
2026 Submissions Schedule:
Chapbook Open reading Open genre: February 2nd - May 1st
Gasher Book Award: March 2nd - July 3rd
Bennett Nieberg Transpoetic Broadside Prize: May 4th - July 3rd
Two Languages Book Prize: postponed due to low funding
Poetry Chapbook Prize: August 3rd - October 30th
Full-Length Open Reading: August 3rd - October 30th
Gasher is looking for work that surprises us with its language, voice, and authenticity. We are excited by work that is deeply engaged in the nuances of craft, uniquely original in voice, and pushes creative boundaries. We are less interested in what’s currently “fashionable” and/or fits within the predictable mold of what makes poems “publishable.” While we welcome poetry that works in traditional forms, we believe in poetry that makes sense of and achieves its form (or lack thereof) as opposed to the poems’ forms existing for artifice’s sake. Similarly, we appreciate approaches to projects that are driven by a curiosity that leads language into unexpected corridors of thought, as opposed to the project working as a shell for language to play within. We are unamused by cleverness, vulgarity, hate, and/or violence.
Stepping out from behind the shadow cast by literary hubs and their creative tastes, Boor Soirée serves as cultural ethnography of the often neglected voices working in rural spaces. The digital project is an archive, community, and shape for the future of craft in U.S. rural literatures, shining light on the inventions and interventions that project a cultural response to the social, political, and economic realities of the landscapes writers of rural United States create within and from.
FOR ESSAYS:
Boor Soirée is accepting essays on craft and scholarly close readings, comparative essays, and statements on the teaching of poetry that engage the intersection of rurality and poetry. Specifically, articles should engage with how rural spaces impact either one’s writing craft or their pedagogy when teaching poetry. We are interested in essays that engage directly with experiences and examples as opposed to discussing these ideas conceptually without application. For craft essays, this includes referencing specific poems; for pedagogical approaches, this includes in-class examples. We are interested in lesson plans that help create access to rural poetics for higher education learners. Complete essays should be between 500 and 5,000 words in length.
FOR INTERVIEWS:
Boor Soirée is accepting completed interviews of no more than 6,000 words, with an introduction paragraph to the interview for forthcoming or newly released book and chapbooks of poetry written by poets who consider themselves to be part of rural American poetry, or write about rurality in their work.
FOR WRITERS SEEKING TO HAVE THEIR BOOK CONSIDER FOR AN INTERVIEW:
Please have the publisher reach out to us directly with a digital ARC and contact information for the poet. Though we cannot guarantee a feature to every forthcoming title, we make our best effort to showcase a wide variety of titles from various presses. Send pitches to boorsoiree@gasherpress.com
This submission form is for current Gasher Press authors ONLY. If you are not currently an author or forthcoming author of Gasher Press, please visit our other submission forms. Non-Gasher Press authors that submit to this form will not be considered.