about the dancing girl press chapbook series

Started in 2004, the dancing girl press chapbook series issues a number of  exquisite open edition chapbooks by women authors every year. Chapbooks are selected from our open reading period every summer, the guidelines for which may be found  below. The imprint is devoted to issuing innovative work by women (including female identifying, trans, and non-binary authors.), as well exploring the boundaries of book-making, hybridity, and the visual/written arts.

What do we look for?

We especially love chapbook collections that offer both narrative and precision of language. Or that which engages and deconstructs existing texts, pop culture, media, art, history, folklore and other subjects. We also have a taste for the strange, surreal, and decidedly gothic, so love to see those books come over the digital transom. 

We pretty much consider "poetry" to be a broad field, encompassing traditional verse, prose and hybrid genre work, vispo, found texts, dramatic or performance driven poems, and lyric essays. If you have a chapbook length manuscript that defies genre and expectations, we would love to see it.  Yearly, we choose a wide range of works, from more traditional personal lyric and narrative poetry to highly experimental and language/based work. 

 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

dgp is happy to accept manuscripts from poets at all stages of their career for publication in our annual chapbook series. We plan to publish a varying number of chapbooks per year chosen from our favorites of the manuscripts we receive.

While we do not offer a monetary prize or payment for those manuscripts chosen to be published in the series, we do offer a payment of 10 copies of the chapbook to the authors chosen. We also offer generous discount (40%) on additional copies the author may wish to purchase to sell themselves at readings and events.

Manuscripts must be between 12 and 32 pages, numbered accordingly, with only one poem per page. Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please let us know ASAP if your chapbook is accepted elsewhere.  We aim to keep your work no longer than three months. Please feel free to query us after that time has passed.

Submissions are accepted via e-mail as attachments in Microsoft word only. Please include “Chapbook Submission/LAST NAME” in your subject line.

 

Submissions are currently CLOSED

Next Reading Period: June 1st-August 31st, 2026

 

Send all submissions/correspondence to dancinggirlpress@yahoo.com