Submissions

ANNUAL PRIZES – January 1st-September 15th, 2025

C&R Press 2025 Awards in Poetry, Fiction (novel and short story), and Nonfiction (memoir, creative nonfiction, and essay) are open! The deadline this year September 15th. The annual prizes award $1,000 and publication in each genre (Fiction, Poetry, & Non-Fiction (Creative Non-fiction or Memoir). We will announce a short list & long list in each category in December 2025 and all submissions are considered for publication outside of the prize.

HONORS, AWARDS & ACCOLADES

We’ve also highlighted some of our award winning books published through our prizes, and through our open submissions. Please check out our new Honors, Awards & Accolades page!

OPEN SUBMISSIONS

C&R Press also has open submission periods for full-length books in addition to the prize. Open submissions are read with a different eye, for instance perhaps social impact, experimentation, story, character, emotional connection or style might elevate over the prose.  We hold seasonal Open Submission categories where each of the previous seasons open submissions are read. We tend to reply no sooner than 6 months and no later than 12 months after submission, but some books may need more time. Please feel free to contact us if it’s been longer than 9 months AND we’ve just completed a reading period. We accept Poetry, Novel and Short Story,  Creative Nonfiction, Art, Hybrid, and Memoir. Open Submission periods typically run consecutively, with each season, so if you miss one, there will be another close behind. Our Submittable page will have dates.

CHAPBOOKS – Deadline March 21st for the Winter Soup Bowl

CHAPBOOKS
Our Winter Soup Bowl is open for submissions December 21-March 21st

We publish at least 2 chapbooks from our two prize series–Summer Tide Pool and Winter Soup Bowl–and look for up to 6 chapbooks across all genres every year. As a note, in addition to poetry, we encourage all genres to submit chapbook length work. We’d like to move the publishing culture toward chapbook length works in fiction and non-fiction and non-genre. Chapbook prize selections come with a $100 honorarium, 10 copies, and an ad campaign.

Here’s everything in a nutshell: 2-6 chapbooks, 3 full length books drawn from prizes, 1-3 selections from open submissions, prize runners up, and agented submissions. Our catalog consists of 110+ full length books and chapbooks! Check out our store and authors while you’re here, and please see our submissions portal for more information on how to submit.  All non-agented submissions must come through Submittable.

PRIZE HISTORY & DETAILS

On January 1st, 2019 C&R Press opened three prizes with $1,000 awards for a poetry book, a novel or short story collection, and a memoir or creative nonfiction collection. The awardees in each genre, a short list, and long list are announced the following January or earlier for each of the annual  awards. We also consider publishing all entries for publication. Winning collections and other chosen manuscripts receive publication the following year. All manuscripts are considered for publication. All prizes observe the CLMP Contest Code of Ethics. Contests are read blind. Our Awardees and lists are below.

AWARDS HISTORY

2024 Awards List
2023 Awards List
2022 Awards List
2021 Awards List
2020 Awards List
2019 Awards List

• We consider all submissions for publication outside of the prize.
• Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but please inform us promptly if your work becomes unavailable.
• The prize is considered an advance against royalties.
• We issue a standard royalty-based contract.
• Each prize selection receives a media campaign valued from $500-$2000.
• C&R Editors determine all prize selections.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

We host two chapbook series per year, once in the winter (Winter Soup Bowl Series) and once in the summer (Summer Tide Pool Series).

C&R hosts a non-contest open call for full-length manuscripts in Fiction, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays, Memoir , Creative Nonfiction, and Mixed Genre; the open reading period is read with a different eye and represents a distinct criteria from the prize.

Signing up for our newsletter is the best way to stay up to date for all submission announcements.

C&R Press proudly encourages submissions from female, minority, LGBTQA+, immigrant, progressive, international, and submerged voices.

For anyone in need of a fee waiver, please message us on FB or IG for instructions on how to apply.

LONG LIVE BOOKS!

AN ESSAY ON OUR INTERESTS

C&R Press publishes literary, chance-taking, well-crafted work that may not be easily sellable to the big publishers though our books manifest pathos & patina akin to the caliber of work you might see from those same big 4. This might include work that is chancy thematically, and of course we love well-written work that remains intriguing, that feels established with a strong voice, but contains within that balance a current of dynamism we might call oddness, bravery, experimentalism, or verve. Fundamentally, we’re looking for great writing and poetry. And yet, we are open-minded and our catalog is quite eclectic, inclusive of many international voices, aesthetics, and genres. We like literary as well as thoughtful up-market work. Select genre work which pushes boundaries, has an edge or an interesting point of view, and leans toward the literary tends to find its way into our hearts, too. Also, we seek memoir and poetry of diverse types, styles, and voices. We have published experimental books, award winning books in fiction and poetry, and many not-easily-categorized books that deserve an editor and publisher’s touch, a place in the contemporary canon. The latter contingent often comes to us through our open submissions, categories we read with the same interest in great voice and craft, but while angling toward our heart and whim, as many times toward art as well (at least of late).   

Certainly, since we’re publishers and not solely editors, we look toward the top literary and national awards and prizes, and submit all of our books to a wide gamut of accolades. Our authors routinely win and or place well with notable indie-awards—which we’re very grateful for (and we believe that plenty of them deserve even more recognition).  We read with a solid expectation of our books garnering independent awards, yet our priority remains to seek out and publish important books from authors who have invested in their words.  

C&R operates as a distinct entity relative to our sister imprint, SteelToeBooks, and, while we run the two presses with a shared interest in writing fundamentals, the expression of our tastes are differentiable. If STB is grounded in that press’s eponymous roots, has an interest in the New American Experience, and might be qualified by the concept of the world as seen by and through the self, C&R orients itself to a greater degree in a more classical sense–the concept and themes, the world, these things are pathways to the individual and to truth–and in a more geographically robust sense. In both cases, diversity of perspective and voice are integral to our choices. We really mean to preserve a unique aesthetic for each, and happily wear different hats. It’s a great thing to be able to explore taste and intrigue as an editor with multiple imprints, while not risking the continuity of one or the other! (And certainly we thank the readers and writers who get this and permit us this small grace). Who knows, we might again take on/rescue another imprint some day to satisfy an as of yet to be expressed perspective.

On a final note (we’ve sort of waded on for a bit longer than anticipated), we love to move however we feel with our chapbooks, love to take chances, love to range widely and whimsically–brazen, experimental weirdness or confined, tightly arranged profundity. Balance and affectation all around!

Anyway, I hope we haven’t bored anyone. Thanks for listening. These differentiations have always been clear to us–we’ve sought to have our collections speak for themselves–but we thought we might sound out our interests more explicitly for folks and the significant few who’ve been asking.

Thanks for your interest. Thanks for being readers and writers. Let’s hope the two stay closely connected; let’s hope they’re highly contagious.