innovative. daring. beautiful.
Rockwood Press makes right-sized poetry chapbooks for people who need poems.
We believe chapbooks are an art form as much as a literary form, perfectly suited for revolution, protest, political change, and social critique. They can be both haunting and hauntingly beautiful.
We believe in emerging and established poets and aim to make room for all kinds of mighty voices in teeny books that might not otherwise find their way into the world.
We believe that a work doesn’t have to be full-length to have a full life. That’s why almost all of our releases are open editions.
With words that reach out like wings, Lana Hechtman Ayers’s new book, Sky Over, will lift and carry you. This brave and loving book reaches across the boundaries, not just of history, regret, and silence but of time and space, life and death. Through these vivid poems to her late brother, Alan, and through one beautiful and poignant message spoken in Alan’s voice, Ayers powerfully proves that we may “love each other alive.” This book will hearten you, for in these deftly woven poems, she brings us close to our longed-for horizons. Here we find renewed connection, forgiveness, and the chance to love again.
—Annie Lighthart, author of Pax
Sky Over explores a sister’s ache over the loss of her older brother with a love that transcends their relationship troubled by growing up with an abusive mother. These poems were inspired by Patricia Fargnoli’s poem about clouds and the ephemeral nature of life, “Winter Sky Over Cheshire County, New Hampshire.” Sky Over’s twenty-one songs of grief travel back and forth through time as the regretful sister, who is addressing her long-gone brother and the ways they navigated their complicated circumstances, discovers exquisite hues of love and forgiveness that persist beyond the provinces of life and death. In the twenty-second and final poem, her brother speaks to her from death’s eternal now.
Sky Over
Sky Over
Recent titles
Different With Him by mk zariel, coming March 13!
The Biology of Leaving by Candice M. Kelsey, coming March 3!
Sky Over by Lana Hechtman Ayers
Lavender Stones by Kenneth Pobo
From the Bowels of Molluscs by Carlie Daley
Banana Pancakes by Annalisa Hansford
A Razor’s Edge by Matthew J. Andrews
In the Way of Things by Nicholas Skaldetvind
On Music: Collected Poems by Nancy Dillingham
Without a Prayer by Scott McConnaha
Confirm Humanity by El Bentivegna
View all our available chapbooks
submissions
We select manuscripts through an open submissions process that occurs year-round.
Manuscripts should be tightly linked collections of ten to thirty poems or up to forty pages, submitted in .rtf, .doc, or .docx formats only. All submissions should be made via email. We do not accept unsolicited paper submissions.
Eligibility: Poets writing in English are eligible. Previous book publication is not a consideration. Simultaneous submissions are permissible, but entrants are asked to notify Rockwood Press immediately if a manuscript becomes committed elsewhere.
There is no open submission fee.
We do our best to reply to submissions within one month, but the time can vary depending on submission volume. If your work has not been accepted or declined, it’s still under consideration. Every submission is considered thoroughly before a response is made.
All submissions are eligible for publication by Rockwood Press with a standard royalty contract.
submissions at Rockwood Press dot com
If we seem familiar
That’s because, Rockwood Press, a not-for-profit literary imprint, is a project of Fernwood Press and its parent company, Barclay Press. For years, we’ve made our books and full-length poetry collections available through POD services, but we wanted to produce more books in-house where we have control over color, texture, paper quality, and the overall shape each project takes.
We’ve also seen a ten-fold increase in poetry submissions over the last year and sensed from our conversations with writers that it’s getting harder and harder to find homes for good work.
The project of Rockwood Press is to bring more great poetry into the world in smaller, focused collections that can be produced locally, quickly, and beautifully.
