Pine Row Press
Literary press dedicated to publishing full-length books of excellence
Manuscript reading period is now closed until early 2026.
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Manuscript reading period is now closed until early 2026.
Please read below (page bottom) about how Pine Row Press stands apart as a literary press. We are a selective and independent press. Pine Row Press is not a vanity press and publication is at cost to the Press, never the poet. All book-length submissions will be considered for the $500 Press Prize.
Published authors include first-time authors and established, award-winning poets.
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Published in December 2025
Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Closer to Nowhere by Thorpe Moeckel. From 2018 to 2021, award-winning writer Thorpe Moeckel made several canoe expeditions through the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande around Big Bend Country. He brought background reading and thinking about the natural and human history of the place, as well as about its current states, and here he’s distilled all of that, including personal trials and discoveries, into a wild river trip of a book. With sensitivity, ranginess, and intimacy, Closer to Nowhere reckons with the stark wonders and complexities of the Chihuahua desert ecosystem, the river and border that cuts through it, and the pressures of deep time as well as the contemporary historical moment.
“Closer to Nowhere is a stunning hybrid work that explores borders, connection, loss; that features talking rivers and catfish and the rushing water and towering canyons of the Rio Grande; and that interrogates the bewilderment and complexity of being alive with wistfulness and beauty.” —Karen E. Bender, author of The Words of Dr. L
Published in September 2025
J. Stephen Rhodes explores life on the edges—between security and fear, guilt and grace, city and country, prosperity and scarcity. His poems, featured in over seventy journals, are complemented by four published collections. Of his work, he says, “I want to write honestly about our brokenness, yet still search for beauty and offer hope to those overwhelmed by modern life.” Rhodes holds a Ph.D. in Theological Studies (Emory), an M.Div. (Columbia Theological Seminary), a B.A. (Eckerd College), and an M.F.A. in creative writing (University of Southern Maine – Stonecoast). He currently serves as Canon Poet at Grace Episcopal Cathedral in Charleston, SC.
Published in May 2025
Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Practice Rapture by Marcia L. Hurlow. Hurlow's prior and seventh collection of poetry, Dog Physics, was published by Main Street Rag Publishing fall 2024. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Nimrod, Baltimore Review, The Louisville Review, After Happy Hours, Chicago Review, Poetry Northwest and Ginosko, among others. A Pushcart nominee, she is co-editor of Kansas City Review.
"To read Practice Rapture is to hang out with Marcia Hurlow whether fishing where her father’s whistling “gray wand of a pole writes/on the darkening surface/his one beautiful word” or walking through farm land of timothy, sometimes with her dog Lucky, or remembering the voices of her family calling their cows home, “Hey boss, steady!” These are crisp, imagistic poems, cleanly wrought and uplifting. We grow up with Hurlow through youth to a long and enduring marriage that has survived stormy times and losses around her, ameliorated by listening “to the calm sleeper beside [her].” This is a book you need to read." -Mary Frances Wagner, Missouri Poet Laureate 2021-2023, author of Immigrants New Camera and Backstories
Published in April 2025
Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Heft of Promise by Frederick Wilbur. Frederick Wilbur’s poetry collections are Conjugation of Perhaps (Main Street Rag, 2020) and As Pus Floats the Splinter Out (Kelsay Books, 2018). His work has appeared in The Comstock Review, Dalhousie Review, Green Mountains Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The Lyric, New Verse News, One Art: a journal of poetry, and Shenandoah among others. He is co-editor of poetry and blogger for Streetlight Magazine. He was awarded the Stephen Meats Poetry Prize by Midwest Quarterly (2018).
Published in January 2025
Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Out of Places by Amy Le Ann Richardson. Amy Le Ann Richardson is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Make Believe Worlds We Built Together, Bottlecap Press 2023, and Who You Grow Into, Finishing Line Press 2024. Her work is featured in multiple journals, including Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel and Still: The Journal and often explores the interplay between humanity and the environment, reflecting on the urgent issue of climate crisis and our relationship with the land. Amy earned her MFA from Spalding University (‘09), spent several years teaching university writing courses, and currently works for a non-profit organization supporting farmers and food systems across Kentucky. She is a farmer, writer, and visual artist who has received grants and fellowships from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which have allowed her to explore her passions more fully and to bring them into her community through artmaking. She lives and works on her farm in Carter County, KY.
Published in December 2024
Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Mother Wind by Susannah Winters Simpson. Susannah Winters Simpson is a hospice nurse. Her work has been published in North American Review, Potomac, Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, MORIA Literary Magazine, Salamander, Sequestrum, South Florida Poetry Journal, SWWIM, and Xavier Review, among others. Simpson’s work was selected twice to be read at the Norton Museum and was chosen as a 2023 Featured Poet for Miami’s SWWIM/The Betsy Hotel’s Reading Series. She is the founder and co-director of the Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches. Simpson holds an MFA in writing and literature from Bennington, a PhD from Binghamton University, and a Certificate of Advanced Study in therapeutic writing. She currently facilitates WriteRecovery groups in treatment centers.
Published in November 2024
Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Feathers and Wedges by Karen Kilcup. A New Englander with long farming roots, Karen Kilcup is the Elizabeth Rosenthal Excellence Professor of American Literature, Environmental & Sustainability Studies, and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Emerita at UNC Greensboro. Over her forty-eight year career, she taught at nine other institutions, including universities in England and Switzerland. In addition to her fourteen academic books, Kilcup has published numerous scholarly and creative works in journals and anthologies. Her poetry collection The Art of Restoration (2023) was awarded the 2021 Winter Goose Poetry Prize, and her chapbook Red Appetite (2023) received the 2022 Helen Kay Chapbook Poetry Prize. She has a second chapbook, Black Nebula (2023).
Published in October 2024
Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of You, Caravaggio 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 and the Publisher and Co-editor of Gunpowder Press. Over the past thirty years, he has published eleven full-length collections of poetry with small presses and more than 500 poems in literary journals such as American Scholar, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner and Southern Review. As an educator, he has written and edited a number of books, most recently Hello, Writer and Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief (4th edition), both published by Bedford/St. Martin’s in 2021. David is also a founding editor of the California Review of Books and the host of Santa Barbara’s Creative Community.
Published in September 2024
Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Arteries by Laura Lee Washburn. Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark), This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street), and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Harbor Review’s chapbook prize is named in her honor, and she’s the president of Small Harbor Publishing’s Board of Directors. Her degrees are from Old Dominion University, where she interned for the Associated Writing Programs Newsletter, and Arizona State University. Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she has also lived and worked in Arizona and in Missouri. From her home in Pittsburg, Kansas, she edits The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative. Her current projects involve reproductive rights and social justice.
Published in August 2024
Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Caught in the Principal's Lens by Roxanne Cardona. Roxanne Cardona was born in New York City of Puerto Rican descent. She earned her BA in Theatre Arts and her MS in Education from Hunter College, another MS in Educational Administration from the College of New Rochelle. She lives in Teaneck, New Jersey with her husband, René. Her poem, Luquillo Entre las Nubes, was a finalist in the 2023 Ekphrastic Poetry Prize and her first book, Caught in the Principal's Lens, was a finalist in the 2024 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Competition. She was principal of a large elementary school in the South Bronx.
Published in June 2024
Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the publication of Flyover Country by BJ Buckley. Montana poet and writer B. J. Buckley has worked as a teaching artist in Arts-in-Schools/Communities programs throughout the West and Midwest for five decades. She lives with her sweetheart and critters in beer barley country along the Rocky Mountain Front west of Great Falls.
Her prizes and awards include a Wyoming Arts Council Literature Fellowship; The Cumberland Poetry Review's Robert Penn Warren Narrative Poetry Prize; the Poets & Writers “Writers Exchange Award” in Poetry; the Rita Dove Poetry Prize from the Center for Women Writers at Salem College, Winston-Salem, NC; the Joy Harjo Prize from CutThroat: A Journal of the Arts; and the 2012 Comstock Review Poetry Prize.
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
Published in February 2024:
Pine Row Press is pleased to announce the 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Poets recently accepted for publication:
Thorpe Moeckel (2025)
Melissa Andrés (2026)
Sharon Perkins Ackerman (2026)
Tracey Knapp (2026)
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 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.
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.
How Pine Row stands apart as a literary press:
How Pine Row stands apart as a literary press:
Thank you for your interest in Pine Row Press. Here's how we operate as a press:
Pine Row Press is a small independent press that publishes selected high quality works
Upon selection, Pine Row will contract with the accepted poet for terms of publication and market
Pine Row Press pays the published poet a small advance on royalties and provides 5 author copies of the book at no cost
Pine Row Press will pay 20% royalty to the author on net sales, without a sales requirement. In addition, any books purchased by the poet are significantly discounted (such as for readings, etc.)
We have a $25 reading 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. Pine Row Press welcomes both new and established poets.
The marketplace offers different publishing options to writers. Pine Row Press stands apart in this way:
Pine Row is not a vanity press or a self-publish press
Pine Row makes no requirement of the poet to buy anything, ever. The Press will furnish initial copies of the finished book to the poet as readers' copies. The Press will manage all book setup, will purchase and establish a unique, actual ISBN for each book (not just an ASIN), will provide listing management, etc.
Pine Row will reach out to its growing network to promote the book
Pine Row will partner with the poet to submit the book to review sites, and where appropriate, to award / recognition opportunities (submission fees paid by poet)
Pine Row will make the book available on Amazon and, if desired Ingram, and the contract will offer fair market royalty terms with the poet, typically 20%
Independent booksellers, and the poet, can order directly from the Press at deeply discounted wholesale rates. We support Independents! They may also order through Ingram, if desired
Pine Row Press will typically publish only a small selection of books a year. Recently published authors have won literary prizes in both the United States (B.J. Buckley, Western Writers of America, and Canada (Mary Dean Lee, Quebec Writers Federation Literary Awards) in 2024 and 2025.
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 in the fall later this year. Currently taking submissions by invite only.)
Submit your full-length poetry manuscript to Pine Row. (Pine Row reading period will reopen in the fall later this 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 (we average about 10 books a year). At any time, a manuscript of exceptional merit may be offered a $500 advance and the Press Prize at the discretion of the Press (uncommon).
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Thank you for stopping by the Pine Row Press booth at the 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.
© 2025 Pine Row Press
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