Kaya Press

We’re currently accepting manuscript submissions from traditionally underrepresented writers, artists, and/or creatives who are emerging (writers who have not yet published or been contracted to write a book-length work with a US publisher are encouraged to apply)! We’re looking for one 15-20 page experimental manuscript that engages with our theme to release as a limited-print chapbook. The winner will receive a $200 honorarium + 10 author copies. Submissions are open until August 30 @ 11:59 pm PST.

About Milkteeth

Milkteeth Books is the intern-run chapbook imprint of Kaya Press that seeks to uplift experimental, hybrid works by emerging diasporic writers. We believe that publishing is political and that art can be a powerful tool for collective liberation. We hope to cultivate a community and serve as a creative lab for those interested in mapping out previously uncharted avenues within these literary spaces. This project will allow us to work closely with one author and offer developmental support for the curation of a new publication.

Theme

“Ultraviolet”

The wavelength of ultraviolet light is just outside the visible spectrum. It is omnipresent, yet diffuse. It permeates, but is absent. On a reader it presents as a sort of glow, a kind of energy humming on the cusp of liminal space—something not quite here, not quite elsewhere. But what would it mean to see ultraviolet? How can we illuminate what is just out of reach, expose what exists at the threshold of experience?

Milkteeth is looking for work that plays around with this ambient affect. How might our embodied experiences gesture to—though not necessarily realize—a collective consciousness? How do you live alongside, feel around, or commune with the illegible and unknowable? What is your relationship to the inexplicable, the emergent, the sublime? We look forward to seeing what you see.

Some references to get you started:

Poems:

• Brigit Pegeen Kelly, “Song”
• Frank O’Hara, “Sleeping on the Wing”
• Aram Saroyan, “lighght”
• Yuki Tanaka, “Seance in Daylight”

Songs:

• Madonna, “Bedtime Story”
• Steve Reich, “Music for 18 Musicians”
• Smerz, “Dreams”
• Solange, “Things I Imagined”

Films:

• Michel Gondry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Barry Jenkins, Moonlight
• Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw the TV Glow
• Wong Kar-wai, Chungking Express

Concepts:

• Afterimages
• Raymond Williams’s “structures of feeling”

We are looking for experimental manuscripts that engage—loosely or otherwise—with the prompt by playing with typical ideas of what poetry, creative non-fiction, fiction, (or a secret fourth thing…) can be. We’d love to see visual poetry, interdisciplinary material, slipstream hybrids, and works that incorporate multimedia such as illustrations, diagrams, maps, code, marginalia, annotations—whatever gives and makes sense to you.

General Guidelines

Please do

• Send all unsolicited submissions through Submittable. We will not be able to read email submissions.
• Send us a 15-20 page manuscript—this might mean your submission looks like a compilation of shorter pieces or one longer piece. As long as it’s within the page range and engages experimentally with the prompt in some way, we’d love to read it!
• Send us previously unpublished work; simultaneous submissions are okay, but please notify us promptly if they are accepted elsewhere.

Please don’t

• Feel too constrained by the number of words in your manuscript. We’re all too familiar with how words sometimes fail us. We encourage you to lean into this and play with other media that might better suit the ideas you’re trying to get across! (In other words, there’s no word count requirement.)
• Feel obligated to stick to any particular formatting requirement (we just ask for readability!)
• Forget that we will not publish work that’s racist, homophobic, transphobic, or generally hateful.

Payment & Publication

• $200 honorarium + 10 author copies.
• Accepted works are subject to potential edits that will be approved by the author before publication.

Questions? Reach out at milkteeth@kaya.com

Please allow approx. 2-3 weeks after the end of the reading period before reaching out regarding the status of your submission. We are a small team--we appreciate your patience!