July Press Updates: Our First-Ever Fundraiser, Upcoming Workshops, & Chapbook Submissions!
We open for chapbook submissions in August. Get those manuscripts ready!
It’s that time of year again. The staff is gearing up for our chapbook reading period which opens AUGUST 15TH. Don’t miss your chance to submit to us this year. We are accepting Poetry, Prose, and Hybrid chapbooks, and we can’t wait to see what the community sends in this reading period. Learn more on our Submissions page to see what we’re looking for in submissions.
Help Us Stay Afloat with Our Annual Fundraiser!
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.
Hot on the Shelves!
We’re excited to have two new chapbooks available in our online bookstore. Learn about them below:
Vanities by Ella Yuna Kim (Austin Youth Poet Laureate)
Abode Press is thrilled to be the publisher of the 2024-2025 Austin Youth Poet Laureate, Ella Kim, and her poetry chapbook Vanities. We have 200 copies of this phenomenal chapbook. Get yours today!
About Ella Kim: Ella Yuna Kim, a senior at St. Stephen's Episcopal School, is the 2024-2025 Austin Youth Poet Laureate. At St. Stephen's, Ella has been editor and graphic designer for The Bell, the school’s newspaper, and involved in theater, acting in numerous plays and musicals. She recently won First Prize in Princeton University’s Lewis Center of the Arts Ten-Minute Play contest. She will be attending Yale in the Fall.
Copyright @ 2025 Austin Public Library Friends Foundation
Editor: Bianca Alyssa Pérez, Austin Youth Poet Laureate
Book Design: Diamond Braxton
Cover Design: Bianca Alyssa Perez
Cover Image: "Details of Faces" by Jean Lapautre, ca. 1690
Austin Youth Poet Laureate Judges Committee: Katrina Brooks, Jennifer Chang, Kathleen Houlihan, Amanda Johnston, Katherine Lamb, Cecily Parks, Leticia Urieta
Mentors: Bianca Alyssa Pérez and Darrell Limuel
Learn more about the Austin Youth Poet Laureate Program here: https://austinlibrary.org/austin-youth-poet-laureate/Sea Changes by Hayun Cho
Sea Changes by Hayun Cho is the seventh chapbook in Abode's 2024-2025 lineup and is officially available for pre-order! All orders will be shipped by early July. There are only 100 copies of this chapbook available, so make sure to get your copy while you can!
Book Description: Sea Changes by Hayun Cho is a hybrid collection that weaves theories of survival and transformation in the face of negotiating rage, grief, pleasure, kinship, and the Korean diaspora. The collection imagines everyday life and the natural world as mediums of revelation through which another world may be possible, traversing kitchens, attics, cities, and seasons. At turns argumentative and mystical, Sea Changes explores the intersections between women’s embodiment, intergenerational memory, and creative practice. The errant lyric voice, buoyed by the intimacies of sisterhood and friendship, arrives at the necessity of dreaming. Sea Changes reflects upon the insurgent promise of being the reader and writer of one’s life.
About the Author: Hayun Cho’s poetry appears in The Rumpus, The Margins, Portland Review, Cream City Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Hayun is Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Notre Dame. She holds a PhD and MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of Southern California and a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University. Hayun’s creative and scholarly work explores the relationship between gender and sexuality, emotion, and creative practice in feminist cultural production. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.
Praise for Sea Changes by Hayun Cho:
"Hayun's poems are enveloped in the tender meat of a soft, colorful creature with a poisonous stinger. Like waves, they push and pull, lapping at the shores of our deepest longing. Otherworldly yet grounded in the sticky matter that makes up our lives, Hayun's writing stares back at history's capacious glare, and within her gaze, home moves through us like ocean water." —Ashia Ajani, author of Heirloom
"Hayun Cho's Sea Changes is a captivating new take on womanhood, feminine rage, diaspora, consumption, and the responsibilities we bear and carry as our ancestors' descendants. Seemingly mundane moments between women - as in 'I walk to the Korean grocery store to buy apples' where an elder teaches her how to select the best ones - and haunting imaginings - such as 'A House Full of Women Who Live Forever' where dream women become her allies - are given equal weight and opportunity to move readers. With precision and beauty, this is a collection that, much like Cho's ghosts, will stay with you long after the last poem rings true." —Sofía Aguilar, author of amor. and STREAMING SERVICE: season twoOrder your copy of Sea Changes here.
Upcoming Abode Workshop!
We have a phenomenal writing workshop planned for August. Take a look below:
Beyond Self-Translation: Bilingualizing the Poetic Process as a Form of Destruction and Creation
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.
Our Virtual Retreat Has Officially Come to a Close!
We have officially concluded our second year of the Abode Press Virtual Retreat with faculty instructors including, KB Brookins, mónica teresa ortiz, Ariana Brown, Stephanie Macias, and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya. The Retreat spanned the entire month of June, with workshops taking place on Sundays. Throughout the week, fellows had access to 2-3 weekly programs.
We had 57 incredible fellows join us this summer studying in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and speculative fiction, and we are incredibly grateful and excited to see all they achieve as writers, activists, community leaders, and artists. Take a look at our 2025 fellows and read their bios to learn more about them.
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.
Divine Byrd is joining our team as an Administrative Assistant. She will be helping us look for grants, posting our monthly Substack update, and other administrative tasks as they arise!
Isaac Salazar, who started as a Poetry Reader on our team back in 2023, was recently promoted to the Editorial Poetry Assistant and will have a more leading role in helping us select poetry manuscripts during our reading period.
Turi Sioson, who also started as a Poetry Reader, was promoted to Publicity Manager is overseeing the Publicity Team to promote our stellar authors!
Em Fullenwider, who also started as a Poetry Reader, was promoted to Events Manager and will be helping us schedule events, planning, and more.
Congratulations to these Abode staff members!! Learn more about them on our Masthead page.
Thank you, as always, for your support! We love you!