August Press Updates: Chapbook Submissions, Upcoming Workshops, & New Chapbook Readers!
August is a big month for us. Are you ready?!
We open for chapbook submissions this month!!
Chapbook submissions open again on August 15th, 2025! Get ready to submit your best poetry, hybrid, or prose work to Abode Press! We are seeking chapbook manuscripts that explore themes of identity, origin, and culture. Share what evokes a sense of home for you. For all submission guidelines and details about author packages, please visit our website. Kindly note that at this time, we are looking for work from writers based in the United States.
We’re hiring a Graphic Designer!
Work with us and contribute to our social media pages, website, and Substack. QTBIPOC creatives in the South are highly encouraged to apply. Applicants must be 21 years of age by August 1st, 2025 and must reside in the U.S. to be considered. If interested, please send your CV and portfolio to diamond@abodepress.com. In the email body, express why you want to work for us + how you align with Abode Press. We look forward to hearing from you! Applicants who fit the criteria will be reached out to in early August.
Meet our 2025 Prose, Poetry, and Hybrid Chapbook Readers!
We are thrilled to introduce our Fall Chapbook Reading Teams! Our 2025 fall reading period is right around the corner and we are so excited to have these amazing readers join us. Each team is comprised of 15-20 readers, all who are talented writers, editors, and experienced readers. We're looking forward to have them join us!
Upcoming Abode Workshops!
Don’t forget to sign up for Beyond Self-Translation: Bilingualizing the Poetic Process as a Form of Destruction and Creation. Happening this month!
Sun, Aug 17 | Virtual Workshop | 12:00-2:00pm CST
“Beyond self-translation” taught by Angelica Dàvila, author of Bilingual Bitch, intends to question the originality of a translated poem. Bilingual writers who self-translate their work may often find themselves inspired by new ideas during the self-translation process. What do we do with these new ideas? Oftentimes, we may think that these inspirations may not have a place in the translated poem, but this may be a form of resistance within our poetic process. When we translate, we make ourselves accessible in another language. Though, as bilingual writers, should we limit ourselves to being accessible in one language over the other or should we resist? As new ideas form during the act of self-translation, our poetic process challenges us to consider whether we need to adhere to translating a poem or whether we need to embrace the fluidity of language and creativity to create new multiple and original poems that all stem from that first poem that we wanted to self translate.
Get tickets here.
Writing with the Earth: An Anti-Imperialism Approach Towards Eco-Poetics
Tue, Sep 16 | Virtual Workshop
We are experiencing a renaissance of environmental writing, but little room is made to explore the relationship of war, occupation and environmental decline. We are living in the sixth mass extinction, largely due to the Western war machine. How are we to create art during times of decline? What is the role of the creative in opposition to ecological violence? Through reading poems of Jayne Cortez, Fady Joudah, and Diana Khoi Nguyen in conversations with contemporary texts about environmental harms and their long lives, participants will walk away with material that addresses the intersections of environmental harm and war making in their writing.
Through reading poems of Jayne Cortez, Fady Joudah, and Diana Khoi Nguyen in conversations with contemporary texts about environmental harms and their long lives, participants will walk away with material that addresses the intersections of environmental harm and war making in their writing.
Get tickets here.
Help Us Reach Our First Fundraiser Goal of $500 by end of August!
We are kicking off this summer with our annual fundraiser to help us do the work we do. Despite the current administration's cuts towards grant funding, we are committed more now than ever to continue amplifying underrepresented voices. As a volunteer-led, anti-racist 501(c)3 press, we publish emerging marginalized writers whose powerful works remind of us home. Many of our authors exist at the brink of what the current administration wants to censor, erase, and silence; and it is our goal to make sure their voices are heard, uplifted, and empowered.
In 2025, we entered our second year of operation having increased our workshop offerings and doubling the size of our annual retreat. We've published 7 authors, with more in our publication queue, and we were relying on several important grants to continue scaling our operations and to increase payments towards authors, staff, and more. Due to the eradication of these grants and increased censorship, book bans, and more, we are hoping our community can help us reach our annual fundraising goal so we can continue doing the work we do.
Contributions are tax-deductible and will go towards increasing author payments, operational expenses, and for more literary offerings, including our first-ever full-length publication prize. Your donations will go towards supporting an indie press that champions marginalized writers with strong values and commitments to anti-racism, anti-colonialism, intersectionality, and empathy. We have been recognized by Women Who Submit for having a racially diverse masthead and women-led masthead; in addition, to having a staff that are primarily people of color, queer and trans, and who mostly live in the South. We are forever grateful to our community and thank you for keeping us afloat to do the work!!
Help us reach our first goal of $500 by donating here.
Abode Staff News!
We want to take a moment to welcome and congratulate new team members as well as recent promotions within the Abode Press family.
Chase Martin and Marilyn Ramírez, who originally started as Hybrid and Prose readers, will move into training as co-Managing Editors for our reading periods. We are so excited for them both to move into this role with us!
2024 Abode Press Nonfiction Retreat Fellow, Eleanor Ball's poem she drafted at retreat last year just got picked up by Haven Spec. Congrats to Eleanor!
Check out out very own Poetry reader Teri Vela’s poem “Before & After” in volume 9 of Troublemaker Firestarter. Find it here.
Sarah Alcaide-Escue has a forthcoming poem in the Louisville Review. Congratulations, Sarah!
Congratulations to these Abode staff members!! Learn more about them on our Masthead page.
Thank you, as always, for your support! We love you!