Etchings Press Chapbook Contest

Etchings Press, a student-run publisher at University of Indianapolis, invites submissions for its first annual chapbook contest. In this inaugural year, UIndy students will consider chapbook submissions in poetry, fiction and nonfiction. All submitted work should be in a single genre of 15 to 30 pages. Collaborative works (two or more authors) are eligible, but not mixed-genre works. The winner in each category will receive a $100 honorarium and 15 copies of the published chapbook.

UIndy graduate and undergraduate students will read the submitted manuscripts and choose a winner in each genre. The students will then edit, design, publish and promote the chapbooks. A limited press run of each chapbook will be printed. In future years, the genres or categories will change based on criteria developed by students.

Eligibility

This spring, students are interested in editing and publishing books from authors in our region. The students are using the 370 miles between Flannery O’Connor’s Milledgeville, Georgia, and William Faulkner’s Oxford, Mississippi, as the relative mileage for a regional literature. Using UIndy’s campus on the southside of Indianapolis as a starting point, that distance makes a circle which includes all of Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia, most of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri, and parts of Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Arkansas, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and even Ontario. To see if you’re eligible for submission, please see the circle on the map.

Contest details

1. Please submit chapbook manuscripts in poetry, fiction and nonfiction using the Submittable content submissions manager for Etchings. You will be prompted to create a free user account that will allow you to submit your manuscript and monitor its status.
2. Please submit manuscripts as a single file and include a title page (without name) and a table of contents. We ask that your name be removed from the manuscript for blind reading.
3. Manuscripts should be 15 to 30 pages in length (up to 7,500 words in fiction and nonfiction).
4. Collaborative works (two or more authors) are eligible. Mixed-genre works are not eligible at this time.
5. For fiction and nonfiction, a single piece or multiple pieces can be considered (multiple flash pieces, thematically connected pieces, etc.).
6. The manuscripts or authors must have a connection to the geographic area shown on the map.
7. Undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Indianapolis will read all entries and choose a winner in each genre to publish. Students will then edit, design, publish and promote each winning book.
8. Winners will be notified in March 2014. Chapbooks will be released and available for sale in May 2014.
9. The reading fee is $10 (payable via submittable.com)
10. The deadline is February 10, 2014.
11. Alumni and current students of University of Indianapolis and former students of its faculty are not eligible.

If you have any questions, please contact Kevin McKelvey.