Literary Journal

Between Shadows Press

Open now

Journals & literary magazines1 open opportunity listed

About the magazine

Between Shadows Press is an independent poetry publisher founded on the conviction that poetry thrives in the margins—between the shadows of mainstream literary culture. Operating primarily through a WordPress-based platform, the press has cultivated a reputation for championing voices that are formally adventurous, emotionally raw, and often overlooked by larger commercial houses. Its catalogue tends toward chapbooks and full-length collections that explore themes of memory, displacement, and the quiet intensities of everyday life, with an emphasis on work that resists easy categorization. The press functions as both a curatorial project and a community hub, frequently featuring poets whose work bridges the lyrical and the experimental.

Editorial focus

Between Shadows Press was born January 2021. Since its inception, the press has released 127 chapbooks, six journals, two full-lengths, and twenty-two broadsides from writers all over the world. While they haven’t recently been open for chapbook submissions, they have been open for multiple journals. You’ll know when they know. They know what they like.

PoetryFiction

Submitting your work

Reading periodDec 1 to Dec 12

Reading feeNo

PaymentContributor copies only

Response timeLess than 3 months

Simultaneous submissionsYes

Unsolicited submissionsNo

Before submitting, read at least two full collections from the press to understand its aesthetic range—work that is spare, imagistic, and unafraid of silence. The press favors manuscripts that cohere around a central emotional or thematic inquiry rather than loose assemblages of poems. Submit only after the reading period opens, as unsolicited submissions outside those windows are typically discarded. Include a brief, unpretentious cover letter that situates your work in relation to the press's existing catalogue, and avoid comparing yourself to famous poets. Simultaneous submissions are generally accepted, but notify immediately upon acceptance elsewhere. Expect a response time of three to six months; do not query before then. Above all, demonstrate patience and a genuine engagement with the press's ethos—this is not a venue for careerist networking but for poets who value the slow, shadowed work of making a book.

Read official guidelines