Submissions
Camber Press is pleased to announce the return of our annual poetry chapbook award. Our ethos is to publish contemporary poetry exhibiting lucid delivery while not sacrificing emotional depth, mastery of craft, or originality.

The Fifth Annual Camber Press
Poetry Chapbook Award

Deadline:
August 15, 2009

First Prize:
$1,000 and publication of chapbook

Judge:
Mark Doty

Submission guidelines:

The winning poet will receive $1,000 and have his or her manuscript published by Camber Press, Inc. Only typed manuscripts no greater than 24 pages of original English-language poems will be considered. Manuscripts must include a cover page listing the author's name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and manuscript title. Names should not appear anywhere else. A title page with no biographical information and a table of contents should follow. Simultaneous submissions are allowed if Camber Press is immediately notified of acceptance elsewhere. Submissions will be recycled, not returned. Include a self-addressed, stamped postcard if you wish acknowledgment of receipt. A $15 entry fee payable to Camber Press must accompany all submissions. International submissions are $15 provided they are in US funds on a US bank. Submissions must be postmarked no later than August 15, 2009. The winner will be announced no later than November 1, 2009, on the Camber Press Web site. Include a self-addressed, stamped envelope if you wish to receive a print announcement of the winner. E-mail us for more information. Send entries to:

Camber Press Poetry Award
1160 Midland Avenue
Suite 3F
Bronxville, NY 10708

Other details:

• If some or all poems in your manuscript have been previously published in literary journals or reviews, please include this information in an acknowledgments page. Any manuscript previously published as a whole in book form is not eligible.
• Multiple manuscripts by the same writer will be accepted if submitted with a corresponding entry fee for each work.
• If the poet's name is present anywhere on the manuscript aside from the cover page, the entry will be disqualified.
• If the poet needs to refer to his/herself during the poem, a pseudonym must be used.
• Please do not send corrections or additions. The winner will be allowed to make revisions before publication.
• Submissions postmarked after August 15, 2009 will not be considered for the contest.
• Total manuscript pages do not translate to an equal number of book pages. Line length, stanza breaks, book sections, type size, margins, and other factors affect the number of pages a finished book will be. If unsure how many pages your book will be or if your manuscript is too long, visit your local library. Look at Camber Press titles and poetry chapbooks from other publishers. By comparing these with your own poems, you can estimate the approximate book length of your manuscript.
• Covers, tables of contents, dedication pages, acknowledgements pages, etc., do not count toward the total of 24 pages.
• "No greater than 24 pages" does not mean your manuscript need be 24 pages. To date, no poet submitting 24 pages has won the Camber Press Poetry Chapbook Award. Please think of your best poems first, manuscript flow second, and "24 pages," if ever, last.
• If you wish to bind your manuscript(s), please use a paperclip. Folders, binders, "bullnose" clips, and staples are not encouraged.
• Please do not send your manuscript via a carrier requiring a signature for delivery. Not only is this is an unnecessary expense for writers, we find the USPS does a more than adequate job of delivering to our location.
• Submissions will be recycled, not returned. Do not send a return envelope or return postage. Never send your only copy of your manuscript anywhere.
• To be advised of future Camber Press news, please join our e-mail newsletter list. Camber Press will not sell, trade, or distribute your e-mail address to any other company, organization, or individual. We don't like spam, either. An e-mail to the same address will remove you from our future mailings.

About our judge, Mark Doty

Mark Doty's Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008. His eight books of poems include School of the Arts, Source, and My Alexandria. He has also published four volumes of nonfiction prose: Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, Heaven's Coast, Firebird and Dog Years, which was a New York Times bestseller in 2007. Doty's work has been honored by the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, two Lambda Literary Awards and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. He is the only American poet to have received the T.S. Eliot Prize in the U.K., and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ingram Merrill and Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Foundations, and from the National Endowment for the Arts. Doty lives in New York City and in Houston, Texas, where he is John and Rebecca Moores Professor in the graduate program at the University of Houston. In the fall of 2009, he will join the faculty at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

A PDF of the above submission guidelines is available here.

Last year, Steve Orlen chose Sally Albiso's Newsworthy in a blind submission similar to the above guidelines. It will be published later this year.

Camber Press is thoroughly devoted to maintaining the integrity of our competitions. Judges are directed to discard any manuscript where the writer of the work can be identified, where they have had a personal relationship with the poet, or if they have contributed in the making of the manuscript.

Camber Press does not choose writers or judges based on race, sex, color, religion, age, national origin, physical ability/handicap, political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity or geographic location. Manuscripts are chosen for publication based solely upon quality of work. Judges are chosen because we like their writings and because they are willing to support small presses and independent bookstores.

We thank you for your interest in submitting your work. Camber Press looks forward to publishing new, talented writers for the rest of the world to discover along with us. At this time we have several other manuscripts in production for publication, and we are not accepting unsolicited manuscripts outside this competition. Watch our Web site for announcements on the winning manuscript and forthcoming awards in both poetry and fiction.