All About Creative Nonfiction Chapbooks
March 14, 2018 § 11 Comments
By Chelsea Biondolillo
I still remember the first nonfiction chapbook I ever found at the AWP bookfair. I’d walked up and down all the aisles and talked my voice hoarse, and maybe I was asking the wrong question, but nobody had one until the SweetLit table. There, I bought Amy Monticello’s Close Quarters, and when I got home, I ordered Donna Steiner’s Elements. I cherished those two for the possibilities they represented (and for the wonderful writing.) The next year, I head about a few presses who were expanding their flash fiction chapbooks to “prose.” And each year since, whenever I’ve been able to attend, I add a few more CNF chaps to my collection.
When Randon Billings Noble mentioned organizing a panel for this year’s AWP on the nonfiction chapbook, I jumped at the opportunity to participate, but life had other plans and I knew by August that I wouldn’t make it to Tampa to join her, Bernard Grant, BJ Hollars, and Penny Guisinger at the front of the room. So, I offered up my participation on “All About Creative Nonfiction Chapbooks” in the form of the below list. These presses have all said (at one time or another) that they would consider nonfiction/prose/hybrid chaps.
This list is bound to be out of date the minute it goes live, because the literary landscape is a shifty thing. Also, many in the list only consider chap submissions during defined contest periods, so please read up on any press policies before hitting send. And don’t forget to buy CNF chapbooks, too. Be the market you wish to see in the literary world.
Chelsea Biondolillo’s List
- Etchings Press Chapbook contest
- Rose Metal Press
- Cutbank (cross-genre)
- Eastern Point Press
- Slashpine Press
- Diagram
- Porkbelly Press
- A-Minor Press
- Sweet Lit
- Origami Zoo Press
- Palooka Press
- Matter Press
- Tammy
- New Delta Review
- Split Lip Magazine – Turnbuckle /Uppercut Chapbook Contests
- Batcat Press
- Birds Piled Loosely – Hard To Swallow Chapbook Series
- Damaged Goods Press (essays, hybrids from Queer and Trans Writers)
- Devilhouse Press
- Disorder Press
- Eggtooth Editions
- Garden-Door Press
- Hermeneutic Chaos Press
- Lightning Key Review – Wilt Chapbook Prize (CNF only!)
- Long Day Press
- Newfound Prose Prize
- The Operating System
- Underground Voices e-shorts (experimental)
- Throwback Books (prose)
- Arcadia – Ruby Irene Poetry Chapbook Contest (I know, but it says CNF, too)
- Bateau Press – Keel Chapbook Contest (hybrid prose)
- The Florida Review – Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Award
- H_NGM_N (prose)
- Homebound Publications – Little Bound Chapbook Series
- PANK
- Gold Line Press Chapbook Contest
- The Cupboard Pamphlet’s Chapbook Contest (prose)
- Ghost Proposal Chapbook contest (essays, multi-media, experimental, post-genre)
- Gazing Grain Press contest (prose)
- Lime Hawk
- Mason Jar Press
- Ursus Americanus Press (prose)
- elsewhere Chapbook Prize (prose)
- Sundress Publications chapbook contest
- Sutra Press
- Epiphany Magazine (published in magazine)
- The Head and Hand Press – Breadbox Chapbook series
- Iron Horse Review prose chap competition
- Vinyl 45 Chapbook contest (YesYes Books) (prose, mixed genre)
- Paper Nautilus Press
- Pithead Chapel Press
- Ugly Duckling Presse
- Anchor & Plume Press
- Ghost Ocean Mag – Treelight Chapbook contest
- smoking glue gun – chapbook contest
- Red Bird Chapbooks
- Vine Leaves Press
- Special thanks to:
- my own declined file in Submittable,
- Allison Joseph’s priceless CRWROPPS list,
- Entropy Mag’s ‘Where to Submit’ monthly feature, and
- The Review Review—
these are all the places I check when I want to know who considers CNF chaps.
NOTE: YMMV. The literary landscape is a many splendored thing. Some of these are annual contests, some of these might not exist anymore. Some charge money, some offer money, some don’t do one or the other or both. And some ran wee-wee-wee-wee all the way home. -Chelsea
Download the Word File: CNFChapbookmarkets
____
Chelsea Biondolillo is the author of the prose chapbooks Ologies and #Lovesong, both from Etchings Press, University of Indiana. Her essays have been collected in Best American Nature and Science Essays 2016, Flash Nonfiction Funny, Waveform: Twenty-first Century Essays by Women, How We Speak to One Another: An Essay Daily Reader, and others. She has an MFA in nonfiction and environmental studies, and currently teaches writing workshops online. She lives well outside of Portland, OR, surrounded by farms and old growth forest, and blogs intermittently at roamingcowgirl.com
Is this a sign? Should I spiff my little guy up and try to get it back out there in the world? Thanks so much for this list-current or not it gives me a teensy bit of impetus….
Thank you.
Frankly, I had never even heard the term Creative Non-Fiction Chapbooks before this morning, while buried in snow, blandly cruising my FB pages. I may have just found MY means of expression! Where can I find out more?
Happy to see my thoughts are shared, and THANKS for this great post! I attended two chapbook panels at the AWP18 (since I was a chapbook ignoramus) and found them wonderfully informative and inspirational. At the otherwise daunting book fair, I picked up a few—many are so beautiful they look and feel like jewelry, the kind I’m willing to spend money on!—as my carry-on only luggage would allow me this splurge. A while ago I also suggested we start a chapbook Binder FB group…Onward!
Thanks for pulling all these resources into one list. I started pulling my published & unpublished CNF into chapbooks last year & will merge this list with mine. A few more that I dug up (like yours, not guaranteed): Bateau Press, Black Lawrence Press, Bull City Press, Paper Nautilus, Red Berry, Quarterly West.
Great article!
Funny, I was lamenting recently my “failure” to pull together a “collection” of essays, and thinking, “Well dang, poets get chap books, so why can’t essayists have something similar?” Turns out, we can! Who knew? Not me. Now I do, thanks to you. Appreciate it.
I KNOW! Who knew? And here I am pounding out my “stuff”, and as it seeps out, I wonder when or where it it may find a venue fit, and TA-DA!
Thanks so much for sharing this list! If any of you would like to read a write-up of the panel, you can read it here: https://assayjournal.wordpress.com/2018/03/12/awp2018-towards-truth-and-brevity-all-about-creative-nonfiction-chapbooks/
I don’t know if you want to include Canadian publishers of Chapbooks – but here is one:
Baseline Press http://www.baselinepress.ca/ – a micro press in London, Ontario
Wow! What a great gift! Thank you!!
Elinor Mattern