Rust + Moth is a literary journal that has been publishing some excellent artwork, poems, and short fiction in print and electronic editions since 2008. They are currently open to short fiction and poetry submissions for the journal. Visit their website if you want more information about that. However, this review is instead focusing on their new venture, a chapbook press.

Chapbooks are small books, usually less than 40 pages in length. Chapbooks usually contain poetry, and they are a stepping stone for poets between literary journals and full books. Chapbooks can be self-produced but there are many presses that publish chapbooks exclusively (Moon Path Press, Hyacinth Girl Press, etc. ). If a press publishes your chapbook, it gives your work additional credibility.

Chapbooks are usually published in small editions, and less than 500 are always produced so that the contents of the chapbook can be re-published as part of a longer look later on. Chapbooks have become more respected over the last decade, and now they are practically a required stepping stone for poets.

Many chapbooks are selected from contests where you have to pay fees, however no fee is required for Rust + Moth to consider your chapbook for publication. They are interested in cohesive manuscripts of 12 to 36 poems. A poem can be longer than one page, but they will not consider manuscripts where more than one poem is not on a single page. So make sure each poem is on its own page.

Individual poems can be published before, but you must make it clear which poems have previously appeared in print and where they appeared. They reserve the right to edit for technical reasons.

Your manuscript must include a brief cover letter (less than a page), a bio, title page, and table of contents. An acknowledgment/dedication page may be included if desired. The acknowledgements page should include a record of where the poems in the chapbook have previously appeared. All pages should be numbered.

You can submit via email, or through the form on their website. You should make it clear in the subject heading that you are submitting a chapbook. To get a better feel for what they are looking for, make sure that you read some of the poems they previously published in their journal. That way you can get a better understanding of the editor’s taste.

To learn more visit their website here: http://rustandmoth.com/submissions/