Pine Row Press

Literary press dedicated to publishing full-length books of excellence

Manuscript submission is open

All book-length submissions will be considered for the $500 Press Prize. Submit here. 

Published in March 2024

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Tidal by Mary Dean Lee.  Mary Dean Lee began publishing poems in American and Canadian journals in 2019 and was selected for Best Canadian Poetry 2021. Her recent work appears in Ploughshares, The Fiddlehead, Burningword, Dunes Review, Salvation South and Hamilton Stone Review.  Tidal is her debut poetry collection. She lives with her husband in Montreal. 

"The poems in Tidal bring a lifetime of struggle, wonder and pain into luminous relief. Standout pieces like “Cardinal Flower,” “Chocolate Souffle,” “Dad at 96,” “Naming the Hills” and the brilliant political allegory “Driving Lessons, Baldwin County, Georgia” chronicle the passage of family, society and season with exuberant precision. Lee's portrait of Georgia (where “the weight of kudzu collapses tar shacks, throttles trees”) is haunting, and her meditations on late motherhood and desire break new ground. Whether an old piano without a single working key, or “a loon calling make-love, make-love from the lake below,” Mary Dean Lee hears the music in all things."

 —Derek Webster, author of Mockingbird and National Animal

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Published in February 2024:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of Mountain Roosters by Matthew Sidney Parsons.  Matt Parsons is a poet and farmer from eastern Kentucky. He has been published in print and online journals such as Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Rattle, and Still: the Journal, among others. Matt is a professional musician and songwriter, touring domestically and internationally. Matt is currently working at home farming, creating new music, writing poetry and fiction, and enjoying the company of his wife and children. 

"There is so much music within the pages of this debut collection of poetry. That music is so fine and lovely that it would be enough on its own but this book also contains wordplay, wit, history, and deep insights into Appalachian culture, the complications of masculinity, and the natural world. It is rare for such a young writer to possess so much wisdom but it shows up throughout the pages of Mountain Roosters, announcing a bright new voice who is celebrating and critiquing his place and his people in complex, beautiful ways."  

- Silas House, Poet Laureate of Kentucky and best-selling author

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Published in February 2024

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Famished by Christopher Watkins.  Watkins is a poet and songwriter. Famished is his second volume of poetry. His debut poetry volume, Short Houses With Wide Porches, was published by Shady Lane Press (a program of The Jack Kerouac Writer in Residence Project). His poems have appeared or are appearing in The Massachusetts Review, Harpur Palate, Hayden's Ferry Review, and more. He received his MFA in Creative Writing - Poetry from the Stonecoast MFA Program at The University of Southern Maine.

Watkins is also an award-winning songwriter with 13 albums released under the name Preacher Boy. His songs have been recorded and performed by dozens of other artists and have appeared in multiple films, TV shows, and commercials. He currently lives in Santa Cruz, CA, and has resided in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle, as well as in the west of Ireland. 

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Published in January 2024

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Swagger  by Roy Bentley.  Swagger is the 11th full-length poetry collection by Bentley. He is an Appalachian-American poet and university creative writing professor. Bentley is also the author of Walking with Eve in the Loved City, chosen by Billy Collins in 2018 as finalist for the Miller Williams poetry prize; Starlight Taxi: Poems (Lynx House, 2013), which won the 2012 Blue Lynx Prize for poetry; The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana (White Pine Press, 2006), winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize in 2006; Any One Man (Bottom Dog Books, 1992); and Boy in a Boat (University of Alabama, 1986), which was selected for the 1986 University of Alabama Press Poetry Series. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Rattle, and elsewhere. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, six Ohio Arts Council fellowships, and a Florida Division of Cultural Affairs Fellowship. 

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Published in December 2023:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Unraveling Script by Maggie Kennedy.  Maggie spends early mornings staring out a window at a row of 100-year-old sycamore trees. Sometimes a poem comes along. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Epiphany, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Atticus Review. She honed her craft at Eastern Illinois University and the University of Chicago, earning degrees in English and creative writing. This is her first book of poems. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her family and works as a professional writer and editor.  

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Published in September 2023:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Inside the Clock by Kevin Burris.  Kevin lives in southern Illinois. His work has appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Poetry East, Atlanta Review, and many others. His first poetry collection, The Happiest Day of My Life, was published in 2016 by FutureCycle Press. His poem “Production” was selected by Mark Turcotte as the winner of the 2021 Mary Blinn Poetry Prize sponsored by After Hours Press. 

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Published in September 2023:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of AFTERIMAGE by Kathryn Weld.  Early praise from Andrew Hudgins: "Often set against a lovingly observed Adirondack landscape, these clear-eyed meditations on loss are both heartbreaking and reassuring as they embrace their necessary heartbreak: “What stays? A girl’s finger/tracing her mother’s mouth.”  

Kathryn is a writer and mathematician living in Pleasantville New York. She holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Graduate Center CUNY and is Professor of Mathematics at Manhattan College. In 2013, she earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the Sewanee School of Letters. AFTERIMAGE is her debut full-length collection of poetry. 

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Published in August 2023:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Constellation of Wings by Kathryne Lim.  Kathryne lives and creates in Santa Fe, NM. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of New Mexico, and also holds a Master’s in Social Work. Her poetry can be found in publications such as Ninth Letter Online, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Sugar House Review, and Constellation of Wings is her debut poetry collection.

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Published in July 2023:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Quieting by Mark Simpson.  Mark has worked as a researcher, teacher, technical writer, and instructional designer. He and his family farmed for many years in the Snohomish River Valley, Washington, where they raised blueberries and other fruit. He now farms several acres on Whidbey Island, Washington, raising what the land allows. He has a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition Studies from Purdue University.

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Published in May 2023:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of When the Moon Had Antlers by Tresha Faye Haefner.  Tresha Faye Haefner is an award-winning author, creativity coach and speaker. When the Moon Had Antlers is her first full-length book of poetry. She is a writer who has lived in California, Costa Rica, and North Carolina. Her work has won the Robert and Adele Schiff Prize, the Pangea Prize, been finalist for the River Heron Poetry Prize, and been nominated for Best of the Net and several Pushcart prizes. Tresha is author of Tattoos on Young Women in Spring (The Poetry Salon Press), Take This Longing (Finishing Line Press), and Method and Mystery: A Research Based Guide to Teaching Poetry (The Poetry Salon Press). She is founder of and lead instructor at The Poetry Salon. To find out more, visit www.thepoetrysalon.com. 

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Published in March 2023:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Poet Dreams of Driving a Ding-a-Ling Ice Cream Truck & Other Means of Escape by Candice Kelsey.  Kelsey has served as a fiction reader for The New England Review and as a poetry judge for Ageless Authors. She has received three Pushcart and two Best of the Net nominations. Her second full-length collection, A Girl / Woman / Teacher / Poet, is out now with Alien Buddha Press (2022) while her debut full-length collection, Still I am Pushing, is out with Finishing Line Press (2020). 

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Published in February 2023:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Map of Unseen Things by Brett Warren.  Warren, a long-time editor, holds a BA in English Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her poetry has appeared in Canary, Cape Cod Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, Eunoia Review, Green Fuse, Halfway Down the Stairs, Hole in the Head Review, One Sentence Poems, Pine Row Journal, Right Hand Pointing, Rise Up Review, and many other publications. 

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Published in November 2022:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Cutting It Loose by David Starkey.  Starkey served as Santa Barbara's 2009-2011 Poet Laureate. He is Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College, Co-editor of The California Review of Books, and the Publisher and Co-editor of Gunpowder Press. Over the past thirty-five years, he has published ten full-length collections of poetry with small presses before this publication. 

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Published in November 2022:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Tour of a Lifetime: Glenamaddy to Gomorrah by Thomas Rabbitt.  Rabbitt was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard College, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Iowa. He is a winner of the Pitt Prize. Now retired, he is the former director of the creative writing program at the University of Alabama. He lives and works on a farm near Lewisburg, Tennessee. 

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Published in Spring 2022:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Leave No Wake by Marie Gauthier.  Marie Gauthier is the author of Hunger All Inside (FLP, 2009). Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Sugar House Review, Cave Wall, and elsewhere. Formerly with Tupelo Press, she works for Pioneer Valley Books, a publisher of literacy resources.

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Published in Spring 2022:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Building Chevys by Elise Hempel.  Hempel grew up in suburban Chicago and has worked as an editor, proofreader, copywriter, columnist, and university English instructor. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals as well as in Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry. She is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award and her full-length collection of poems, Second Rain, was published by Able Muse Press in 2016. She lives in central Illinois.

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Published in Spring 2022:

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Figure 1 by Beth McDermott. Beth's poetry has appeared in many journals including Tupelo Quarterly  and Southern Humanities Review. Reviews and criticism about art and ecology appear in American Book Review, After the Art, Kenyon Review Online, and The Trumpeter. She’s an Assistant Professor of English at the University of St. Francis and recipient of a Distinguished Teaching Award, an Illinois Speaks Micro-Grant, and first place in the Regional Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest. She is editor-in-chief at Cider Press Review and lives with her family in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. 

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Published in 2021:     Recipient of the Press Prize 

Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Busing to Byzantium by Bruce Guernsey.  A native New Englander, he is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Eastern Illinois University where he taught for twenty-five years. He was awarded seven faculty excellence-in-teaching awards, and was selected as the State of Illinois Board of Governors’ “Professor of the Year."

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Poets recently accepted for publication:

Independent booksellers may place orders directly with Pine Row Press for bookseller discount here.

Pine Row Press -- publishing full-length poetry books of exceptional merit.   

Pine Row publishes an online literary journal, and separately, runs a literary press to publish full-length books of excellence.  Pine Row publishes both new and established, award-winning poets. We are not a vanity press.  

We have a $25 submission fee. We will read every manuscript submission but we do not promise comments on the manuscripts that are not accepted.  Sometimes it is just not a fit, a matter of taste.

How we operate as a literary press:

The marketplace offers different publishing options to writers.  Pine Row Press stands apart in this way:

The Pine Row Press editorial review process is highly selective. The Press does not seek to produce volume but rather quality.  

We look forward to reviewing your submission. 


Submit your full-length poetry manuscript to Pine Row.  (Pine Row reading period will reopen early next year. Currently taking submissions by invite only.)

Pine Row Press is interested in poetry with a voice. Pine Row publishes an online literary journal, and separately, runs a literary press to publish full-length books of excellence. Pine Row has published first time poets and established, award-winning writers. Pine Row is not a vanity press - it is selective, you pay nothing to publish, and you will receive a modest advance and author copies if selected. Poetry manuscript submissions (full length book) should consist of at least 50 pages, and not more than 120 pages including a table of contents and brief poet bio. Simultaneous okay, but please let the press know if the work is accepted elsewhere. Poet/author retains full copyright of the work. 

This is not a contest entry, but rather an open review of all submitted work with a reading fee. There is no minimum or maximum number of manuscripts that will be offered publication, it is strictly a decision based on the quality of the work and the opinion of the press. At any time, a manuscript of exceptional merit may be offered a $500 advance and the Press Prize at the discretion of the press.

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Thank you for stopping by the Pine Row Press booth at this year's 2023 AWP Conference

The booth promoted recent Pine Row Press publications and provided an opportunity for writers to learn more about the Press and upcoming publications.

© 2024 Pine Row Press