Call for Submissions—2026 Prima Materia First Chapbook Award

For a writer who is Black, Indigenous, or a Person of Color publishing their first chapbook. Recipients of this award receive an honorarium of $300, publication by First Matter Press in a paperback edition, and 20 author’s copies.

First Matter Press is a not-for-profit publishing collective centering community and craft. In dialogue with editors and fellow writers, authors are guided in crystallizing their manuscripts, collaborating with a featured artist on original cover art, and publishing/promoting their book. Our authors own 100% of their copyrights and receive 100% of sales proceeds.

We expect that all authors who apply are open to our community craft editing process and to collaborating with us on the promotion of their book.

While authors may submit from any part of the U.S. (sorry, no international submissions will be considered for this award), we are best able to support authors based in the Pacific Northwest, as our community connections are most robust in Portland and Seattle. 

For this submission cycle, our editors feel particularly excited about:

• Work that pushes the boundaries of genre–this may be craft that can still be considered poetry, but the poems or structure of the manuscript departs from a typical poetry collection
• Hybrid works combining poetry with essay or prose.
• Chapbooks focused on a subject or theme
   

We will accept submissions from March 15 through July 1, 2025 with a release date planned for September 2026.
 

We are most interested in working with authors who:

• Are first-time publishing authors. (We do welcome submissions from authors who sold less than 100 copies of  previously self published projects.)
• Have participated in a process of reflection and revision in community with other writers.
• Have a complete first chapbook ready to publish and are interested in accepting feedback during the final editing process.
   

Publishing with First Matter may be a good fit for you if:

• You currently consider yourself a practicing writer/poet and are ready to become a published writer/poet.
• You enjoy developing your craft through community engagement (workshops, feedback circles, submitting to journals and magazines, etc.).
• You actively seek out support and reflection from editors and peers but want to maintain creative autonomy.
• You have a strong sense of your authorial voice, and the ability to sieve through reflection to determine what feedback fits your manuscript and what does not.

Please attach your submission in a single file (doc/x or pdf) that includes the following: 

1. A cover letter that introduces yourself, offers a brief craft statement about your writing and your intentions for your manuscript, and answers the questions below:

• What, if any, experience do you have with seeking feedback about your craft? Do you participate in any group workshopping communities?
• Do you have a connection with the PNW? What does your network of writing/art community currently look like?
• In as many words as you’d like, tell us about your manuscript's origin story. Please include some info around the evolution(s) it has gone through since its first beginnings.
• During the editing process, we want you to be empowered to preserve what you feel is working best in your manuscript. What are some things you would like to make sure stays intact from start to finish?

2. A poetry or hybrid manuscript consisting of 20-40 pages of written material (not including table of contents, notes or acknowledgments). Please separate each new poem or section with a page break. Please include an Acknowledgments page if any of the included writing has been previously published or is forthcoming in journals or magazines.

3. A third-person biography (less than 100 words).

Your cover letter, your 20-40 page manuscript, and your biography should be attached to your Submittable submission in a SINGLE doc/docx or PDF attachment. For an example of a submission-ready file, please click here.

We can only consider submissions that include all the above elements. Only complete submissions that follow these requests will be read. If your submission is rejected as incomplete, you are invited to resubmit corrected and complete materials within the open reading period dates.

Simultaneous submissions are encouraged, but please notify us promptly if your manuscript has been accepted elsewhere.

Please make sure your email notifications are turned on so you don’t miss a message from us! Please be patient with our all-volunteer reading team. If you haven’t received a response by August 30th, please contact us.