2018 Chapbooks!

Our complete 2018 line of chapbooks is listed below; we’ve added three chaps to previously selected works. The first two titles are selected from our January pool of submissions, and we’ll also be publishing our first photographic chapbook (Light Experiments).

Says the Forest to the Girl by Sally Rosen Kindred (poetry)

Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned by Sara Ryan (poetry & CNF)

Light Experiments by Madeleine Barnes (photography)

Dreamland for Keeps by Sarah Nichols (erasure poetry)

Love Me, Anyway by Minadora Macheret (poetry)

Two of our 2017 books were moved to 2018:

Blackbird Whitetail Redhand by Lindsay Lusby (poetry)

Found Footage by Maggie Woodward (erasure poetry)

Congratulations to our new poets & writers & artists!
We can’t wait to work with you to bring your books into the world.

Thank you to everyone who submitted. Thank you for your patience in awaiting our reply—we took a bit longer to read this year than usual. Once again, we were given the pleasure of making some very difficult decisions. We had to say no to some books we’ll be buying when they’re released from other presses. We’re quite sure they’ll be picked up soon.

You can pre-order any combination of three, five, or all of the 2018 line, and we’ll send them as they’re finished on the binding table.

(All of our titles are individually printed, collated, trimmed & bound by hand.)

Pushcart Prize Nominations

We’re very pleased to announce our Pushcart Prize nominations for 2016. Congratulations to the nominees, and thank you so much for sharing in your poetic journey with us. (All of our nominations this year are poems.) We’ve pulled works from our micros, chaps, lit mag, and anthos:

from our chapbooks & micros

“from her mouth” from bindweed & crow poison: small poems of stray girls, fierce women (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Robin Turner

“Sawaruna [“Do Not Touch”]” from hiku [pull] (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by James A. H. White

“The Pond in the Corner of the Yard” from A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Amorak Huey

from our lit mag, Sugared Water, #005

“When I Grieve” by Wren Hanks : also appears in slightly different from in Ghost Skin (Porkbelly Press, 2016)

“According to My Father Peaches Ward Off Spirits” by Su Cho

from our anthology SKY+SEA

“Love Letter to Galileo: Axis” by Stacey Balkun

College Town by Doug Paul Case

College Town (Doug Paul Case) cover img by Ben McNutt

Doug Paul Case’s chapbook is the first we accepted for our 2015 line. It’s one of those manuscripts that hooked us on the first glance and lured us through to the very last poem. These linked poems explore identity, desire, loneliness, connection, and look closely at both the nuances of the narrator and his Indiana college town. | available for purchase via Etsy

“No one can resist the allure of Doug Paul Case’s honest-with-a-wink poems musing on a certain strain of modern Americana alive and well in the Rust Belt. These poems are slow and then fast, sprinkled with sparky humor and sly wit and raw, gorgeous lust—with the occasional glimpse of a totally not-at-all gratuitous penis.” —Carrie Murphy, author of Pretty Tilt and Fat Daisies

An excerpt from “On the Eve of My Twenty-fifth Birthday”

I wear my black leather jacket
and brown leather boots, and I leave

my house, walking north along the back roads
leading to the stadium. This is Indiana.

This is the beginning of March, and the snow
has melted from the roads, and the clouds

are shallow enough for the strongest stars
to make themselves known, to keep me

looking up until I pass someone walking
in the other direction, who’ll look up, also, to see

whatever he thinks I’m seeing…

About the author:

Doug Paul Case works as a salon receptionist in Bloomington, where he recently received his MFA from Indiana University. He is the poetry editor of Word Riot and the publisher of Gabby. His poems have appeared in Salt Hill, Rattle, Washington Square, and Court Green, and his debut chapbook, Something to Hide My Face In, won the 2013/14 Robin Becker Prize from Seven Kitchens Press.

Cover Artist:

Ben McNutt // benmcnutt.com

McNutt’s personal work for the past four years has focused on wrestling through various media such as portraiture, still life, clothing, and sculpture. (His piece featured on the cover is titled “Wrestler.”)

Chapbook Submissions NOW OPEN! (January 1-31)

Pigasus in Skulls

Bring on the chapbooks! https://belly.submittable.com/submit

12-28 pages, all genres considered. Simultaneous submissions accepted. Please see our full guidelines!

Each book will be produced in open edition with artwork solicited or designed in-house. All chaps are bound by hand.

Porkbelly Press is a feminist press open to work by all. We’re queer-friendly, and encourage works from authors&poets all along the identity spectrum.

A Sampling of Poetry, Fiction, & CNF from Porkbelly Press

Our most delicious titles!

These are our most delicious offerings with hand-screened covers (left to right):

Sugared Water (lit mag, various authors & poets) | $10

l’appel du vide (Christina Cooke) | $10

Skeleton Keys (Laura Garrison) | $10

Vein of Stone (Sarah McCartt-Jackson) | $10

Bodies in Water (P. Andrew Miller) | $10

We’ll be tabling at Imaginarium (Louisville) in September, and we’re offering a limited number of these sets this month: all five of these titles for $38. The press is raising a little cash to pay for travel & table & stay. You can also use a $5 off coupon code IMAGINE on any order over $30 (on chapbooks, gift subscriptions, or even sketchbooks & journals).

The beauty of chapbooks

The beauty of chapbooks

On this rainy Thursday morning, I was reading our twitter feed and came across this link (when Submittable tweeted it to ask, “if you were a chapbook, how would you be bound?”). Sampson Starkweather offers some thoughts on chapbooks and how they’re completely amazing, including this gem:

Chapbooks also have such a materiality and visceral physical life, because they are mostly handmade and handbound and come in all shapes, sizes (from Small Fires matchbooks to The Pines LP records) and textures imaginable (god I love texture!), made from old military uniforms, childhood blankets, prison cups, cardboard, vinyl, rubber, bolts, matchbooks, you name it. It is this handmade element and imagination and of course each chapbook’s limited nature that gives them such value, and ties them to history and an archival existence. Chapbooks are a link to the human that I think is more important than ever right now in the face of ever increasing digital media and publishing, Chapbooks are like Sarah Connor and her son (John Connor) facing the Terminators in Terminator 2: the hope of all mankind and the future of the human race lie in their hands. Also, they are perfect to read on the subway! | read more

We agree; chapbooks are handbound artifacts of human-to-human creativity and communication, and it’s why we take the time to make these editions. It’s why we insist on producing them on paper, in a lasting, portable, fondleable form, to be carried about and opened up in those moments between gadget fiddlings.

So, if you were a chapbook, how would you be bound?

Reading Chapbook Manuscripts Through April 1

The press is reading chapbook manuscripts through April 1, 2014. We’re looking for 12-28 page works with a cohesive thread, tight focus, and are particularly interested in works with a strong sense of place or identity.

Manuscript announcements & excerpts for chaps accepted in the 2014 season will pop up on the blog in the coming weeks. Pre-orders are available in our shop via Etsy. Those electing to pre-order will be the first (after the writers & poets) to receive special edition copies.

Love Me, Love My Belly, a body image zine printed by PP, has closed for submission. Submission responses have gone out for everything, and we’re awaiting final confirmations before going ahead with layout and proofing. We anticipate that the zine will surface sometime between late April & early May.