Querencia Press is a small press that describes themselves by saying “Querencia Press is an independent publisher from the Chicago-land area amplifying marginalized voices & creating a safe space for writers and artists to share their stories. We are especially interested in work that has been looked over in the past and challenges conventional genre placement.” They publish poetry, fiction, nonfiction and hybrid work. They publish a journal which we’ve reviewed here, as well as an additional journal named Scavengers.

Querenicia Press is all volunteer run, and you can learn more about their staff here, if you scroll down. Some of the staff has a strong track record of publication, but most don’t have much experience in publishing outside of Querenicia. However Querencia published their first book in 2022. Since then they have published a lot of other books.

For a literary press that has only been around for a few years, they have a large back catalog which you can see here. They vast majority of what they have published so far is poetry. Their covers are generally good and genre-appropriate.

One of the good signs on their website is they actively distribute free eBook copies to reviewers. They also encourage people to sign up for their email list.

They are a member of the CLMP and IBPA but I no longer take membership in either of these organizations seriously. The IBPA has always had known bad actors as members, and more recently I have found a number of vanity presses and presses behaving in predatory ways that are members in good standing of the CLMP. When I tried to report one of these presses, I was ignored.

This isn’t to say membership in these organizations is a bad sign, it just isn’t a good one. They are also a member of MIPA (which I don’t know much about) and The Authors Guild Member Community. The Authors Guild is great but they don’t have a formal membership for publishers, just individuals, and I have never seen them listed on a publisher’s site before in this way. They have been a recipient of a We Need Diverse Books grant. They also have a promotional relationship with Chill Subs. Querencia Press also accepts donations which is not unusual for a volunteer run press.

They are currently open to submissions of chapbooks and full length manuscripts. They will close to submissions in November. You can see their full submission guidelines here.

They also state: “Querencia accepts all genres but we do have some HARD SELLS—young children’s books (middle grade and YA are more likely to be accepted, depending on the message trying to be conveyed), cookbooks (we don’t really have an audience for this, so we probably aren’t going to be a good fit), poetry books that contain toxic positivity regarding healing and the timeline for healing, collections with more than 10% micro poetry or rhymed verse, historical/period romance, most romance poetry (if it’s queer or surreal, you have a much better shot), historical fiction centered on war, nonfiction work that is religious, sports, or travel related. We do not have a word count limit, but the higher outside of your genres typical word count, the less likely we will be to accept.

We love experimental and hybrid work. For genre specific fiction work, we are most likely to accept sci-fi, surrealism, magical realism, & horror, but anything that centers on mental health, trauma, chronic illness/disability, women’s rights, BIPOC rights, & LGBTQIA+ rights or systemic issues will catch our attention.”

They also regularly have open calls for non-paying anthologies and other opportunities.

They used to share information about their contract on their webpage. I cannot find that information now. To learn more or to submit, please go here.