Summer 2025 Open Reading Period Report & Finalists!

We continue to receive more submissions every year. For context: our first reading period was in 2022, when we received 264 manuscripts. In 2023, the number rose to 309. In 2024, it was 334. This year we received 425. 

As we noted last year, we think it says something good about the world and about the poetry community that there are so many poets out there writing and putting books together. Our submissions remain fee optional, with no required payment. But we do accept tip jar donations, and this year, 275 of our submitters (about 65 percent) donated about $3800, an average of around $13 per donor.

We are beyond grateful for this generosity—honestly, we could not maintain the press without this kind of community support. A small press is a labor of love, certainly, but so many things we do require money: distribution, paying our amazing designer, giving our authors a small initial payment, printing, shipping, attending conferences like AWP, and more.

We read so many incredible manuscripts this summer, and here are our top twenty finalists, not including the four we have selected for publication (which we will announce soon!)—thank you for the chance to read your beautiful poems, images, lines. Seriously, we are still talking about some of your poems, and you made our final decisions so difficult! Thank you, amazing poets. Although these manuscripts were not our choices this time, we encourage you to watch for these books, and read these writers, because these titles will be on the bookstore shelves before you know it:

Thomas Snarsky
a few small muscles

Jasmine Khaliq
Somewhere Horses

Marilyn Johnson
Silent Car

Maureen Thorson
gloss

Monika Cassel
Long Line

Jennifer K. Sweeney
Redwood Communal

Amelie Langland
Alabama Tulip

Amanda Roth
Elegy for My Father's God

Eli Rahm
Megafauna

Gauri Awasthi
The Mother Wound

Amish Trivedi
The Depression Era

Cynthia White
One Life to Live

Chris Corlew
LAKESHORE MONK

Megan Leonard
Mercy

Hannah Bonner
The Ordering of Vision

Emily Holland
Notifications On

Lawrence Di Stefano
AERATING THE FIELD

J-T Kelly
A Lighter Sentence

Tara Burke
Soft Neglect 

Ja'net Danielo
Eclipse

See you next May, poets!

Amorak and Han, River River Books

(our Fall 2025 titles are available for preorder now!)