Tupelo Press welcomes applications for the following internship opportunities:
Teen Education Outreach Intern:
This project focuses on two central tasks for our teen writing program outreach: developing contemporary resources in diverse voices for HS teachers in multiple writing genres, and assisting with developing contact lists for educator outreach. Adding to our online bank of contemporary examples enriches our ability as a literary press to expand access to the diversity of material in the poetry world. The intern will leave the position with a a keen sense of diverse contemporary voices and genres with examples, as well as network of secondary level contacts for future teaching initiatives.
Social Media Intern for Education:
Responsibilities depend on intern’s social media experience and will include creating and curating educational content for Tupelo Press's Social media platforms, and interns with recording talents this can include TikTok, Vimeo, and YouTube Channels. Content will routinely be drawn from a diverse bank of literary publications as well as Tupelo Press's deep well of experience in publishing and teaching, the intern will leave the position with a greater bank of literary tools and deeper understanding of resources that support them while building a portfolio of social media material.
Book Sales and Distribution Intern:
This project focuses on producing content for book promotions including writing book descriptions of varying lengths, including following guidelines for sales algorithms, and developing keywords for the books based on their own experience as well as language from literary and lay reviews. The intern will leave the position with a keen sense of book promotion within the industry as well as a portfolio of examples, and the skills to make them an asset for any publication institution.
Generative Fundriasing Project Intern:
This internship involves the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project and involves database management, and monthly organization of participant materials to support a vibrant ten-year generative poetry fundraising project. Knowledge of Wordpress is an asset but can be taught. Participants will gain valuable insights into donation management software and reporting and leave with an expanded bank of literary contacts.
Course Adoption Intern:
This project would focus on two central tasks: developing a portfolio of curricular resources pertaining to a recent work of literary poetry, fiction or nonfiction published by Tupelo Press, and assisting with outreach to educators who could adopt the book into their curriculum. The student will develop a letter that highlights and frames the curricular materials developed during the internship, and will also work collaboratively to create databases of educators for outreach purposes. Because many publishers are foregrounding course adoptions as a way to bolster sales and create a sustainable business enterprise, this internship will offer valuable and marketable expertise for those interested in careers in literary publishing. The student will leave the internship with practical skills and a network of educator contacts for future course adoptions initiatives in literary publishing.
Book Publicity Intern:
This project will consist of two central tasks: assisting with the further development of a database of reviewers and review markets in the student’s chosen genre, and assisting with outreach to both reviewers and review markets for a book publicity campaign in the student’s chosen genre. Students will leave with a working knowledge of publicity outlets within their genre of choice, as well as a roster of contacts in that genre. Student will also have the option to write reviews, receive feedback, and interview a writer for their chosen publicity campaign. The benefit of this being that he or she will have the opportunity to participate in and receive feedback on both sides of the publicity business, and will also have published clips to present for future reviewer, interviewer, and magazine writing opportunities.
Development and Fundraising Intern:
This internship will consist of three central tasks: 1) Developing creative strategies for fundraising in coordination with the staff of Tupelo Press, such as auctions, crowdfunding campaigns, and more; 2) Assisting with outreach to past donors and prospective donors; 3) Organizing past donation history into a user-friendly database for other key staff. The intern will leave with an expanded network of fundraising contacts, as well as valuable and marketable expertise in development for arts nonprofits and literary publishers.
Web Design Intern for Tupelo Quarterly:
This internship would offer the opportunity of participating in every aspect of production for one of our issues. Responsibilities would include designing posts for our website, which includes cross-disciplinary work, poetry films, collaborations, translation, poetry in all styles, fiction, essays, interviews, and reviews; proofreading; and corresponding with authors to perfect their presentation of the work on the site. The student would work collaboratively with myself, our managing editor, Tiffany Troy, our Associate Editors-in-Chief, Erica Buist and Wendy Chen, and a staff of Associate and Senior editors that includes Guggenheim fellows and Levis Prize Winners, among many other honors. The student will leave with a working knowledge of Wordpress, enabling him or her to start their own web publication, assist in the development of an established web based literary magazine, or simply make themselves more marketable to literary publishers who are rapidly expanding their web based content and resources.
Tupelo Press is now reading submissions of fiction (including novels and short story collections) year-round.
Please keep in mind that this is not a contest. Manuscripts are not read anonymously. We hope to find manuscripts we love and want to publish, but understand, please, that Tupelo Press is under no obligation to publish any of the prose manuscripts submitted to us. Please also bear in mind that Tupelo Press accepts very few works of prose — no more than one or two per year. All manuscripts will be read and all decisions made by the editors of Tupelo Press only.
There is a reading fee of $45 for each prose manuscript submitted. Why a reading fee? We are an independent, nonprofit literary press. Reading fees help defray, but do not by any means cover, the significant time involved in reading works of prose, and the cost of publishing the books we commit to. Before submitting, be deeply thoughtful about whether your manuscript is fully ready for publication. Please don’t send works of prose previously submitted to us, unless specifically asked to do so.
Tupelo Press is now reading submissions of literary nonfiction year-round. Please submit only completed manuscripts for our consideration.
Please keep in mind that this is not a contest. Manuscripts are not read anonymously. We hope to find manuscripts we love and want to publish, but understand, please, that Tupelo Press is under no obligation to publish any of the prose manuscripts submitted to us. Please also bear in mind that Tupelo Press accepts very few works of prose — no more than one or two per year. All manuscripts will be read and all decisions made by the editors of Tupelo Press only.
There is a reading fee of $45 for each prose manuscript submitted. Why a reading fee? We are an independent, nonprofit literary press. Reading fees help defray, but do not by any means cover, the significant time involved in reading works of prose, and the cost of publishing the books we commit to. Before submitting, be deeply thoughtful about whether your manuscript is fully ready for publication. Please don’t send works of prose previously submitted to us, unless specifically asked to do so.
In our just-published anthology, The Last Milkweed, we asked poets to walk with us into a dark wood. Now, considering the “political climate” and the concomitant need for an antidote, we will next publish a companion anthology that embraces all takes on themes of rebirth and renewal--from optimistic to numinous, from luminous to satirical, and everything in between.
Accordingly, Tupelo Press wants to read your submissions for a poetry anthology, The Writes of Spring. You might or might not want to keep in mind that when Igor Stravinsky premiered his ballet “The Rite of Spring” in Paris on May 29, 1913, both the music (his) and choreography (by Vaslav Nijinsky) were so “unconventional” that a riot broke out in the audience. Therefore, send us poems—whether conventional or unconventional—for a poetry & photography anthology inspired by springtime, with all of its metaphorical & mythical resonances. Jeffrey Levine will supply the photos. You’ll supply the poems. Newly-sprouted work only, please, nothing previously published.
Starts now, ends June 30th. $15 submission fee for up 3 poems.
Note: this is not a contest. Feel free to include a bio note. Include your name and email on each page. Modest publication fees will be paid for each accepted poem.
Typically preliminary readers assist with evaluating contest entries, and vote on which manuscripts should be honored as finalists and forwarded on to the judge. We assign each preliminary reader 50 book or chapbook-length manuscripts. While this is an honorary position, we would be pleased to feature a bio with information about your creative work on the Tupelo Press staff page, and provide complimentary Tupelo Press books and broadsides as a token of our appreciation.
Please use this link to submit book-length works of literature in translation. We are open to submissions of both poetry and prose, as well hybrid and experimental work. As you prepare your translation submission, there are a few things to note:
--We pay a $2,500 - $3,000 advance for a book of poetry.
--We pay for rights, however, we expect the translator to have made sure that rights are available.
--Whenever possible, please be sure to include the original language text alongside the English language translation.
--We are particularly interested in works of literature being made available in English for the first time.
Thank you, as always, for thinking of Tupelo Press. We look forward to reading your submission!
2025 Berkshire Prize for a First or Second Book of Poetry
January 1 – April 30th (postmark or online submission-date)
EXTENDED DEADLINE: MAY 31ST, 2025
$3,000 Prize
Final Judge: Carolyn Forché
Carolyn Forché is the author of five books of poetry, most recently In the Lateness of the World (Penguin Press, 2020), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and also Blue Hour (2004), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Angel of History (1995), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award, The Country Between Us (1982), winner of the Lamont Prize of the Academy of American Poets, and Gathering the Tribes (1976), winner of the Yale Series of Young Poets Prize.
She is also the author of a prose book, What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (Penguin Press, 2019), winner of Juan E. Mendez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America and a finalist for the National Book Award. Her anthology, Against Forgetting, has been praised by Nelson Mandela as “itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice.” She was one of the first poets to receive the Windham Campbell Prize from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and in 1998 in Stockholm, she received the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award.
She has translated the poetry of Claribel Alegría, Robert Desnos, Lasse Söderberg, Fernando Valverde and Mahmoud Darwish. She has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and in 1990, Lannan Foundation. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is Distinguished University Professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She lives in Maryland with her husband, photographer Harry Mattison.
The Berkshire Prize for a First or Second Book of Poetry includes a cash award of $3,000 in addition to publication by Tupelo Press, 20 copies of the winning title, a book launch, and national distribution with energetic publicity and promotion. Manuscripts are judged anonymously and all finalists will be considered for publication. Please read the complete guidelines before submitting your manuscript.
Who May Submit
The Berkshire Prize for a First or Second Book of Poetry is open to anyone writing in the English language, whether living in the United States or abroad. Translations are not eligible for this prize, nor are previously self-published books. Employees of Tupelo Press and authors with books previously published by Tupelo Press are not eligible. Poets submitting work for consideration may be authors having published only one previous collection or writers without prior book publications.
We continue to be impressed by the quality of work we see and generally receive many, many more worthy manuscripts than we are able to publish. In addition, each of our contests and reading periods has a different team of editors, guest editors, esteemed readers, and final judge. And of course our tastes and needs evolve from year to year with each production schedule. For all of these reasons and more, please know you are welcome to submit your manuscript even if you have already entered it in one or more of our contests or reading periods in the past, and even if you have a manuscript pending in a recent submission opportunity. Thank you for honoring us with your work -- we're excited to see what wonders arrive over the transom.
Submit a previously unpublished, full-length poetry manuscript with a table of contents. There is no mandatory page count. We suggest in the area of 48 to 88 pages of poems, but all manuscripts will be read and considered with full respect, regardless of length, and no manuscript will be rejected simply because it's shorter or longer.
Include within the document a single cover page with the title of the manuscript only, so that your manuscript document remains anonymous. Submittable provides fields to fill in your contact information: name, address, telephone number, and email address.
Individual poems in a contest manuscript may have been previously published in magazines, journals, anthologies, or chapbooks, but the work as a whole must be unpublished. If applicable, include with your manuscript an acknowledgments page for prior publications.
Simultaneous submissions to other publishers or contests are permitted, as long as you notify Tupelo Press promptly if a manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
Before you submit a manuscript to a Tupelo Press competition, please consider exploring the work of the poets we have published. We’re drawn to technical virtuosity combined with abundant imagination; memorable, vivid imagery and strikingly musical approaches to language; willingness to take risks; and an ability to convey penetrating insights into human experience.
Tupelo Press endorses and abides by the Ethical Guidelines of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), which can be reviewed here, along with more about Tupelo Press’s ethical considerations for literary contests.
Notification of Receipt
The online Submittable system automatically confirms receipt.
Beyond this, kindly refrain from requesting an individual response to confirm receipt of your manuscript and/or payment. We receive thousands of manuscripts each year and cannot offer individual acknowledgments. Thank you for your understanding.
Deadline
All entries must be postmarked or certified by Submittable by midnight (EST) of April 30th, 2025. Extended deadline: May 31st, 2025
Results
Results will be announced in summer 2025. We notify entrants in three ways:
- Via postal mail to those who included a SASE with their manuscript.
- Via email to those who included an email address with their contact information.
- We post the results on our website.
Reading Fee
A reading fee of $30 (U.S.) must accompany each submission. Multiple submissions are accepted, so long as each submission is accompanied by a separate reading fee. Why a reading fee? We are an independent, nonprofit literary press. Reading fees help defray, but do not entirely cover, the cost of reviewing manuscripts and publishing the many books we select outside of our competitions.
You will be prompted to pay via Submittable.
Submit Your Manuscript Now
Via Submittable: Submit Beginning on January 1, 2025
Be sure that your document is complete and formatted correctly before uploading.
We do not accept manuscripts via email or fax.
Thank you for your participation and your support of Tupelo Press.
We look forward to reading your work!