Palette Poetry is an online literary journal that endeavors to uplift and platform emerging and established poets.
The world is eager for poets. In 2016, more people spent their hard-earned money on poetry books than in any other year on record. When times are dark, the world often turns to poets for insight and for language reanimated. Palette Poetry is here to paint our small part of the world with truth through poetry, as imaginative, eviscerating, and provoking as truth can be.
Our mission is to create a nourishing and brave space for poetic voices, whether new, emerging, or established, especially those that often go unheard or unrecognized. Our goal is to recognize and publish the most innovative and exciting poetry we can.
Palette firmly believes writers should be compensated for their work and is a paying market. We pay $50 per poem accepted. We do not charge fees for Featured Poetry submissions and offer a quick-response submission option for writers of historically marginalized identities. All creative work published in Palette comes through our submission windows; we do not solicit poetry whether for Featured Poetry or for our contests.
By submitting to Palette Poetry, submitters agree to receive correspondence about future work and submission opportunities from Palette Poetry. You can unsubscribe at any time.
**If you haven't already, please verify your email address with Submittable for more consistent communication.**
Unless specifically requested, we do not accept AI-generated work.
We warmly invite you to submit to The 2025 Palette Micro Chapbook Prize! Palette Poetry will select four micro manuscripts to publish in print and digitally, beginning in the fall of 2025. Poets are encouraged to submit a cohesive collection consisting of ten to fifteen pages of poetry, but no more than ten poems.
The four winners will each receive $500 and 2025/2026 publication, which includes a free downloadable digital chapbook on our website, ten physical author copies to share and sell, and the option to enable sales at Amazon, Bookshop.org, and Barnes & Noble, earning 50% royalties on your micro chapbook. We will also host a virtual launch party to celebrate your micro chapbook publication date. Additionally, thousands of readers, editors, and journals will receive micro chapbook access through our newsletter. The winners will be offered the opportunity to work with Palette editors to revise the manuscript.
Submissions are open from December 1, 2024, to February 2, 2025. The Micro Chapbook Prize is open to all poets writing in English. We hope that you enjoy curating a micro chapbook from your body of work that would best fit one of the following themes:
Winter
Poems about retreat, rescue, camaraderie, coldness, mentorship, stirring, archiving, forests, chopping, sinking, wrapping, and dreaming.
Spring
Poems about travel, colors, digging, dancing, sewing, singing, feathers, heartbreak, parks, seeking, citrus, and softness.
Summer
Poems about emptiness, sky, expanse, eating, flowing, running, reaching, towers, shouting, fingertips, swimming, and glass.
Fall
Poems about cobblestones, fire, arguments, graveyards, ink, candles, blankets, apartments, planning, reading, and watching.
Submission Guidelines: Please read carefully!
- For this prize, we are only accepting collections consisting of ten to fifteen pages (not including cover page, table of contents, or acknowledgments) containing no more than ten poems.
- Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English—inclusion of other languages is welcome, as long as the poem is largely written in English.
- Some of your micro chapbook may contain poems that have been previously published. We ask that at least one-third of the micro chapbook is unpublished at the time of submission. Of course, it is not necessary for any of the poems to be previously published—we are excited to celebrate micro chapbooks of brand-new work as well!
- We accept simultaneous submissions—just please send us a note if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere.
- Your submission must be no more than ten poems and no more than fifteen pages. Please submit all your poems in ONE document. Please begin each poem on a new page and include each poem’s individual title. In the same document, please also include: a cover page with the micro chapbook title and your name, a table of contents, and an acknowledgements page with any previous publication credits.
- When you submit, you can indicate which season you think your micro chapbook best fits. However, we will also consider it for other seasons, so don’t feel the need to get this designation exactly right.
- We do accept multiple submissions; for example, if you would like to submit a different micro chapbook for a different theme, each submission will include the $20 reading fee.
- Writers from historically marginalized groups are invited to submit for free until we reach the fifty free entries budgeted for this particular contest. (This category is now closed.)
- Please include a brief cover letter in the cover letter box with your publication history, if any. To safeguard our reading staff, please include content warnings in the cover letter, if applicable, as well.
- Review our FAQ page for frequently asked questions.
- NOTE: If after submitting you notice an error in your submission, please message us rather than withdrawing and resubmitting your submission. We can open it to editing once so you can correct the error.
- Palette Poetry does not accept AI-produced work.
- The contest closes February 2, 2025. Submitters will be notified of their submission status sixteen to twenty weeks after the contest’s closing date.
Included Unique Opportunities and Discounts
As a thank you for your support for Palette, we’d like to offer a 10% off discount code on a writing class from The Writing Salon. Find a class and use the code included in the confirmation message at checkout.
Editorial Feedback Option
This manuscript review costs $99 and will provide you with three pages of detailed and actionable feedback on your micro chapbook. Our guest editors will evaluate the themes, strengths, and opportunities for revision in your micro chapbook as a whole, and may give more specific feedback on individual poems. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and are all incredibly astute poets.
Submissions for our Featured Poetry category are open year-round to poets at any stage of their careers. We highly encourage new and emerging poets to submit.
We are thrilled to offer significant payment to our partner poets: $50 per poem, up to $150. We are proud to be paying for published pieces but will be highly selective in our choices for publication.
We also warmly invite under-represented and marginalized writers to submit. Our aim is to be an accurate representation of the diversity of our beautiful community. Your voice is valued here.
- Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English—other languages are okay to include, as long as the poem is largely in English.
- Please do NOT include your name or identifying information anywhere within your packet of poems. We do not read submissions anonymously but prefer identifying information to be included in the cover letter, not the packet of poems.
- We accept simultaneous submissions, but please send us a note if your work is picked up elsewhere (we want to say congrats!)
- Submission must be no more than 5 poems and must not exceed 10 pages.
- We do not accept multiple submissions. Please submit all your poems in ONE document.
- Please include a cover letter with your publication history, if any.
- Expect around 3 months for a response. Please do not ask for an update on your submission until four months have passed.
Dear poets,
The 2019 Diversity in Publishing survey found that, on average, 80% of decision-makers in the publishing industry are white. This inevitably creates systematized discrimination in terms of who gets published—without active and deliberate measures, people of color will continue to be marginalized. Important, innovative voices will continue to be passed over and dismissed.
We at Palette Poetry hope to use our platform to actively begin demolishing the discriminatory systems that pervade the publishing industry. To that end, we welcome Black writers, Indigenous writers, and writers of color (BIPOC) to submit through this category for a quick decision made directly by the editors. We'll do our best to return a decision on your poetry within 2-4 weeks.
Sending every good wish your way,
Sarah & the Palette team
Guidelines:
- Submissions of unpublished poems are open internationally, for historically marginalized BIPOC writers ONLY.
- We accept simultaneous submissions, but please send us a message via Submittable if your work is picked up elsewhere.
- Submissions must be no more than 5 poems and must not exceed 10 pages.
- We do not accept multiple submissions. Please submit all your poems in ONE document.
- Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history, if any.
- Expect 2-4 weeks for a response.
- Publication in our Featured Poetry series includes a $50 per poem payment.