Category: News

Workhorse Writers Chapbook Open Reading Period

Posted on by Christopher McCurry

Our fourth chapbook reading period is open from December 1st to the 31st!

The Basics

We are looking to publish 1-3 poetry chapbooks by working writers, which we define loosely as anyone who does not make a living from writing or teaching writing alone. The manuscript should be 14-26 pages of poetry that has not previously been published as a whole. We aren’t considering translation at this time.

How We Choose What to Publish

Workhorse’s mission is to provide opportunity and access to writers at all stages of their practice. We incorporate writers/readers from our community to discuss the manuscripts and come to a final decision on what to publish. We hope to publish local writers and writers who we would like to introduce to our community. If you want to read some of the past selections before submitting visit our shop.

What Authors Receive upon Publication

We want to provide an opportunity for a zero cost publication for our authors. Along with no reading fee to submit, author’s receive 50 copies of their book (from a print run of 100), $100 dollars toward publishing related expenses for readings they may give, and, if local, a featured reading at a local spot to celebrate the release.

Help Us Sustain and Expand This Opportunity

This reading period is possible thanks to the generous support of people in our community of writers. If you would like to become one of those people, click this link to checkout ways to get involved. And join us on Facebook and Instagram!

Thank you. We can’t wait to read your work!

The Details

  • Manuscripts should be 14-26 pages.
  • We cannot publish previously published collections.
  • Only submit one collection.
  • Simultaneous submissions are fine.
  • We do not need a cover sheet.
  • One poem per page, multi-page poems are good.
  • Use a standard, 12-point font.
  • We cannot allow revisions once a manuscript has been submitted.
  • Decisions will be made by February 15th, 2021.

Click to Submit to the Workhorse Writers Chapbook Series

Workhorse Writers Chapbook Series Announcement

Posted on by Christopher McCurry

We are excited to announce the Workhorse Writers Chapbook Series Selections to be published in 2020! 

Above the River by Sue Churchill 

Elephants in the Casket by K. Nicole Wilson 

A Place to Sleep by Drew Pomeroy 

We are also thrilled to be expanding our number of books this year. Each year we will solicit one chapbook book from a member of our Workhorse community.  This year we happily get to publish The Two/Body Problem by Joseph Nichols. His chapbook will be available in the winter.

These manuscripts will be available to order in the coming months. You can have all four books (and a copy of each year’s Lexington Poetry Month anthology) delivered to you and support our mission to provide opportunities for working writers to share their work and grow in their craft by clicking on this link: Support Workhorse. 

Workhorse Writers Open Reading for Chapbooks

Posted on by Christopher McCurry

Our third chapbook reading period is open from December 1st to the 31st!

The Basics

We are looking to publish 1-3 poetry chapbooks by working writers, which we define loosely as anyone who does not make a living from writing or teaching writing alone. The manuscript should be 14-26 pages of poetry that has not previously been published as a whole. We aren’t considering translation at this time.

How We Choose What to Publish

Workhorse’s mission is to provide opportunity and access to writers at all stages of their practice. We incorporate writers/readers from our community to discuss the manuscripts and come to a final decision on what to publish. We hope to publish local writers and writers who we would like to introduce to our community. If you want to read some of the past selections before submitting visit our shop.

What Authors Receive upon Publication

We want to provide an opportunity for a zero cost publication for our authors. Along with no reading fee to submit, author’s receive 50 copies of their book (from a print run of 100), $100 dollars toward travel expenses for readings they may give, and, if local, a featured reading at a local spot to celebrate the release.

Help Us Sustain and Expand This Opportunity

This reading series is possible thanks to the generous support of people in our community of writers. If you would like to become one of those people, click this link to checkout ways to get involved. And join us on Facebook and Instagram!

Thank you. We can’t wait to read your work!

The Details

  • Manuscripts should be 14-26 pages.
  • We cannot publish previously published collections.
  • Only submit one collection.
  • Simultaneous submissions are fine.
  • We do not need a cover sheet.
  • One poem per page, multi-page poems are good.
  • Use a standard, 12-point font.
  • We cannot allow revisions once a manuscript has been submitted.
  • Decisions will be made by February 15th, 2020.

Click to Submit to the Workhorse Writers Chapbook Series

Selections for the 2018 Workhorse Writers Chapbook Series

Posted on by Christopher McCurry

Workhorse Writers Chapbook Series Selections! 

 

The River Singing by Lennart Lundh

The Rainy Season by Eduardo Ballestero 

Hands: Ten Fingers in a Game of Never Have I Ever by Helen Feibes

 

These manuscripts will be available to order in the coming months. You can have all three books (and a copy of each year’s Lexington Poetry Month anthology) delivered to you and support our mission to provide opportunities for working writers to share their work and grow in their craft by clicking on this link: Support Workhorse.

 

Workhorse Writers Open Reading Chapbook Series

Posted on by Christopher McCurry

Our second chapbook reading period is open from December 1st to the 31st!

The Basics

We are looking to publish 1-3 poetry chapbooks by working writers, which we define loosely as anyone who does not make a living from writing or teaching writing alone. The manuscript should be 14-26 pages of poetry that has not previously been published as a whole. We aren’t considering translation at this time.

How We Choose What to Publish

Workhorse’s mission is to provide opportunity and access to writers at all stages of their practice. We incorporate writers/readers from our community to discuss the manuscripts and come to a final decision on what to publish. We hope to publish local writers and writers who we would like to introduce to our community. If you want to read some of the past selections before submitting visit https://workhorsewriters.com/shop/

What Authors Receive upon Publication

We want to provide an opportunity for a zero cost publication for our authors. Along with no reading fee to submit, author’s receive 75 copies of their book (from a print run of 150), $100 dollars toward travel expenses for readings they may give, and, if local, a featured reading at a local bookstore to celebrate the release.

Help Us Sustain and Expand This Opportunity

This reading series is possible thanks to the generous support of people in our community of writers. If you would like to become one of those people, click this link to checkout ways to get involved. And join us on Facebook and Instagram!

Thank you. We can’t wait to read your work!

The Details

  • Manuscripts should be 14-26 pages.
  • We cannot publish previously published collections.
  • Only submit one collection.
  • Simultaneous submissions are fine.
  • We do not need a cover sheet.
  • One poem per page, multi-page poems are good.
  • Use a standard, 12-point font  Times New Roman.
  • We cannot allow revisions once a manuscript has been submitted.
  • Decisions will be made by February 15th, 2019.

Click to Submit to the Workhorse Writers Chapbook Series

Hannah LeGris’ Debut Chapbook: desire is a hungry thing

Posted on by Christopher McCurry

New poetry for the end of the the year from Hannah LeGris!

 

34.

he bought me topo chico

I touched his wrist

people asked
where do we live

together, for how long
and when did we move

here, I was leaving the next day 
we had never been 
we had never been

two seasons had passed

he took a bite of my 
breakfast

I bought him ice cream 
I bleached his sink

I kissed his shoulder

I left

ORDER HERE

___________________________________

Hannah LeGris holds a MA in English Literature from the University of Kentucky and a BA in English from the College of Wooster. She has taught memoir and creative nonfiction with The Young Women Writers Project, the SwallowTale Writing Project, and to University of Kentucky students. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Misty Skaggs’ Debut Chapbook: Biscuits and Blisters

Posted on by Christopher McCurry

If you want some fresh new poetry, Misty Skaggs’ first ever chapbook Biscuits and Blisters serves it up right. From her collection:

Country Eggs

The fear grips me
as I crack speckled
country eggs
on the brim
of my favorite mixing bowl.
The fear
of fertilization.
Sheer and sudden terror,
at the thought
of what I might find
beyond the thin shell.
The fear of a half-formed
fetal chick
plopping out
to land with a sickening splash
in my cake batter.

~

Here’s what people who know what’s what have to say about the work.

At one time, proper manners said that you never eat with your elbows on the table. However, Biscuits and Blisters said to hell with manners. This collection is a meal that doesn’t try to tell you how to eat. The poems of  Misty Skaggs are honest in their seasoning. Generous with her stories. And trust me. You will have no problem finishing your plate and asking for seconds. She’s that good on the page.

– Jude McPherson , author of I Hate Crowds

I have known Misty Skaggs since she was a girl, and I’m here to tell you she is bone-true to the woman you’ll meet in these pages. She loves what the rest of us would do away with: weeds, peach trees without harvest, lard, the back road, our grandmothers.  In Biscuits and Blisters we have the first work of what will surely turn out to be a lifetime of beloved and wrought poetry from Skaggs. I look so forward to her next book and her next.  

– Rebecca Gayle Howell, author of American Purgatory 

ORDER HERE

___________________________________

Misty Skaggs is an author, artist, activist and three time college drop out.  She was born and raised in the backwoods of Eastern Kentucky, where she still resides out at the end of a gravel road in Elliott County. She currently serves as Appalachian Features Editor at Rabble Lit, a working class journal for the arts. Skaggs’ roots  show through in nearly every sentence and her poetry and prose have been featured in literary journals across the Appalachian region for well over a decade. When she isn’t writing, the poet enjoys hitting up musty thrift stores, drinking too much coffee and growing a kickass garden. You can find more of  her work online at rabblelit.com or at her blog, lipstickhick.tumblr.com

Dan Howell’s Newest Collection: Whatever Light Used to Be

Posted on by Christopher McCurry

We are excited to announce the release of Dan Howell’s collection: Whatever Light Used to Be

~

Dan Howell’s collection of poems, Lost Country (Massachusetts), was the runner-up in 1994 for the Norma Farber First Book Award of the Poetry Society of America, and short-listed for the 1994 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry.  Other awards include a Writing Fellowship (Poetry) at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Tom McAfee Discovery Award (Missouri Review), and a citation for Notable Essay in Best American Essays 1993.   

~

Dan Howell’s voice rises elegant and calm through the carved surfaces of these poems. Regarding the strangeness of everyday moments with wonder, these amazing poems remind us that the broken world still lives.

– Cynthia Huntington, author of Heavenly Bodies

The marvelous poems in Whatever Light Used To Bemove against the gravity of time and corrosion toward moments of ecstasy that are all the more convincing and ecstatic for their refusal to forget the gravity they momentarily overcome. These are seasoned poems, tough, disquieting and beautiful, impossible to forget.

– Alan Shaprio, author of Reel to Reel

~

Piano

Her wattled fingers can’t
stroke the keys with much
grace or assurance anymore,
and the tempo is always
rubato, halting, but still
that sound—notes quivering
and clear in their singularity,
filing down the hallway—
aches with pure intention, the
melody somehow prettier
as a remnant than
whatever it used to be.