Before sending something to the press, please be sure you understand its ethos and scale of operation (read more here and in the FAQ). If you’re on board, then send an email to deadmallpress [at] gmail.com with the following:

• A manuscript: 15-30 pages, one poem per page. Prose is ok too, and same page count applies. Please send both .docx and .pdf versions

• A biographical note: It can be boilerplate and brief, no need to be impressive. But let me know how to find you on social media.

• A statement of interest: A single paragraph will do. Basically, let me know how you and your work aligns with the press's ethos and the qualities of writing described below. (If we’ve interacted before and I already know you, Hello! and you may minimize this step.)

• Indication of simultaneous submission (which is ok as long as you keep me in the loop)

• Lastly, please indicate how open you are to editing: not at all, minimally, moderately, or very. There is no wrong answer here: it simply helps me understand your position.

If you fuck up on any of the fine print stuff here, it’s ok. But not fucking it up helps me.

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Regarding response times, if you have not heard from me after one month of sending your email, it has been rejected. I cannot guarantee a personal reply due to time constraints.

Regarding editing, half the books went out with almost nothing changed, while the other half had degrees of editing, reformatting, and cutting. It all depends on your particular book. But by letting me know your position in advance, both of us can avoid a lot of wasted energy.

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Regarding the actual substance of the writing I publish, I'm open to all kinds: there is no “house style,” so to speak. But I'm especially interested in writing that fits the following descriptions:

• deforms or intensifies language in some way to create a linguistic event on the page

• is in contact with imagination, dreams, psychic alteration

• is informed by improvisation, spontaneity, musical thinking

• is influenced by oppositional or experimental poetics, moving beyond default modes of lyric realism

• is surreal without becoming kitsch or domesticated

• is about labor of all kinds, waged or not

• confronts colonialism imperialism capitalism white supremacy technocratic billionaire sadists and all the rest of the nightmare

• comes from writers outside the academy and without institutional support

• from writers marginalized due to race, gender, disability, and/or sexuality

• from writers who reject the more professionalized aspects of literary culture in the US and who seek a counterculture for poetry (see here and here).

If any of these sound like you or your work, please send something my way. Also, although the above list points in a different direction, I will sometimes publish more straight-ahead lyric poems if they actually have something to say, and if the poet’s politics and ethos aligns with the press’s.

And of course:

NO FASCISTS. NO RACISTS. NO TRANSPHOBES.