submit a proposal

Pulley Press locates, celebrates and publishes poetry from America’s rural places.

The traditional path to publishing beautiful poetry is a long one, usually leading to an MFA and a tangle of contests and submissions with reading fees and on to publications. From there, poets publish in magazines and try to move into publishing a collection. Pulley Press is a mechanism that hopes to make that whole process more accessible, and faster. 

If you would like us to consider your manuscript, or you have a Pulley pitch, please see below for submission guidelines.

 

seeking Pulley poets

Pulley Press is looking for poets with full-length book manuscripts available for publication. We are also looking for poets who would like to create a collection of poetry based on interviews and collaboration with people in their communities. (See: We Had Our Reasons by Ricardo Ruiz)

We encourage and publish poetry by poets who write from rural places. A book created with “APulley” includes:

  • An introduction offering context of the place where the poet is writing from;

  • poems written by the poet in collaboration with members of their community;

  • Selections of interview transcripts with these community folk;

  • Biographies of the participating poets.

If you are a poet from such a place and open to the idea of creating poems in collaboration, using the Pulley technique, we would love to receive a proposal from you!

We are looking for:

  • poets who are from, and immersed in small-town or rural life;

  • poets who are eager to interview friends, family, and community members, build transcripts of the interviews, and work with the interviewees to make poems;

  • poets who keep their word— delivering what they say they will provide, on time;

  • poets who have strong prose clips (the book will entail writing brisk, rich descriptions of the community members)

  • poets who communicate well, (returning emails, calls, etc., and being proactive in informing the editor of progress)

We expect to review proposals as quickly as we can gather them. We are reading proposals now.

Please submit a short proposal that includes the following:

  1. your name, contact information

  2. a biography that includes where you grew up; your experience in the community you’ll be working in and where you live now;

  3. description of your community;

  4. a work sample of 4 poems that you are proud of;

  5. a tentative list of people whom you will interview If your proposal is accepted, we will offer an advance.

Submit to: hello@pulleypress.com