Swan Scythe Press will announce the submission requirements for its 2025 Chapbook Contest in January 2025. Any poet writing in English is eligible to submit. We will accept manuscripts between March 1, 2025 and June 15, 2025.

The winning manuscript will be published in a 6" x 9" format, with full color cover. The contest winner will receive 25 copies of her/his book, a prize of $200, and the opportunity to buy copies of their book at 40% of retail price. Previous winners have then sold copies of their books at prices that assure profits for themselves, at readings and other public appearances. Swan Scythe Press will also provide free copies to book reviewers.

The winner of the 2024 Swan Scythe Press Chapbook Contest is Aida Zilelian for her manuscript Dissonance.

Finalists include Michael Homolka for Twelve Maxims, Bern Mulvey for Promise, Kenneth Pobo for SING, CLOSET, Robin Wang for bildungsroman and Eliot Khalil Wilson for Your Heroes for Ghosts.

2024 CONTEST RULES: We require submissions in the following format:

*Title page with author’s name, address, phone number, and email address

*Another title page without any identifying information; book title only

*Table of contents

*Acknowledgments page (optional)

*20 to 32 pages of poems

*All pages must be numbered

*Submit ms. bound only by a binder clip.

*Manuscripts must be postmarked prior to, or on, June 15, 2024.

*DO NOT INCLUDE COVER ART OR ART WORK OF ANY KIND!

Please include with your manuscript:

*Reading fee check for $18 made out to Swan Scythe Press

*Stamped SASE for announcement of winner

*No SASE for mss., which will be recycled.

Send your manuscript to: Robert Pesich, Editor, Swan Scythe Press 1468 Mallard Way, Sunnyvale, CA 94087.

Or you can can now submit using submittable.



Email: robert.pesich@gmail.com if you have further questions.

Failure to follow format rules as recommended, or postmark deadlines, will remove the manuscript from judging. Simultaneous submissions are permitted as long as you inform us if your manuscript wins another prize or is accepted for publication elsewhere.

Swan Scythe Press began publishing in 2000, and has published 47 chapbooks. Its authors have won many national and local grants, awards and fellowships, and have distinguished themselves as artists and educators throughout the U.S. and in foreign countries. Now launching its second decade under the direction of Robert Pesich, Swan Scythe Press is committed to discovering and publishing the best new poets in America today, and to featuring poets of diverse ethnicities/races, ages, sexual preferences, and genders -- though our emphasis is on the quality of the writing, not on any particular demographic.