SUBMIT

Announcing the 2025 Lightscatter Press Prize: $1000 and publication of a book length manuscript. Judge: Heid E. Erdrich, author, most recently, Little Big Bully (Penguin Poets). Submissions portal will open July 16-September 17, 2025.

 

ABOUT THE PRESS: ​Through its manuscript competition, Lightscatter Press seeks the work of emerging writers (defined as having published no more than one full-length book of poems), across a spectrum of voices, experiences, and identities, whose writing diffracts as it meets the world, finding life and light in multiple mediums. Writers need not have a concept of how their manuscript might become multimodal--we will work closely and collaboratively with the writer whose manuscript is chosen to create an accessible design for the book as well as its digital/multimodal manifestations.If writers do have concepts for multimodal applications or forms, however, we would be glad to see them. Please attach a description of any multimodal concepts you have as the final page in the manuscript.

 

We encourage you to take a look at LSP’s books for iterations of our vision for 'the book and / the book plus.'

 

For more about Lightscatter Press’s mission and values, click here.

 

SUBMISSION DETAILS:Submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts will be accepted July 16 to September 17, 2025. We also enthusiastically accept hybrid genre submissions, submissions in English, and multilingual texts--those that combine English with another language.

 

Submit a manuscript of not fewer than 48 pages of poetry (we suggest an upper limit of around 64 pages, but this is not proscriptive), including a list of acknowledgments. Your name and contact information should not appear anywhere within the manuscript.

 

Former and current students of the judge, as well as friends and associates of the judge, may not submit to this year’s competition.

 

A $30 entry fee must be paid at the time of submission. We only accept submissions through our online submission manager. Work sent by any other means will not be read. (No email submissions.) If you find the entry fee to be prohibitive, we have a limited number of fee waivers available. Please reach out to the press to request one of these waivers.

 

Poems may have appeared in journals and chapbooks but not in, or as, a full-length, single-author collection.

 

Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let us know immediately if your manuscript has been accepted elsewhere.

 

All manuscripts will be read by the Lightscatter Press editors. Finalists will be sent to the judge.

 

All questions happily answered: lightscatterpress@gmail.com.