TULIPWOOD IS INTERVIEWING for

Poetry Reader-Editors

Join a new independent press

Gain publishing experience in collaboration with an editorial team

[SEATTLE, WA, August 2026]

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Are you looking for a way to join Tulipwood’s creative community? Do you want to make a big difference at a small press? You’re invited!

Tulipwood Books seeks Poetry Reader-Editors to join our developmental-editing press. We publish single-author poetry collections and an annual journal of poetry and prose. We provide workshop-style editorial feedback to all submissions at no additional cost to the author.

As a Reader-Editor, we ask you to read through assigned submissions to find poems and collections that connect to Tulipwood’s artistic vision. Readings are assigned periodically, and we will ask for your editorial feedback on every piece assigned. Suggested edits should be professional, constructive, and encouraging. We come to the page with generosity. We choose, as Marvin Bell put it, to “always to be on the side of the poem.”

This is part-time volunteer work that welcomes you into our acquisitions process and gives a creative outlet through independent publishing. At Tulipwood, being a poetry editor goes beyond choosing poems that suit our taste. It requires a honed understanding of poetics—how poems work and why.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of developmental editing and/or poetry acquisitions experience.
• Past or present participation in 2+ poetry workshops. (This includes community classes, academic courses, informal workshop groups, etc.)
• Publication history: 2+ poems published or forthcoming in the past 3 years.
• Ability to attend Google Workspace meetings (Pacific Time).
• You have a passion for original literature, the arts, and language. You are creative, collaborative, and opinionated.

Preferred Skills

• Working knowledge of Google Docs, the Chicago Manual of Style, and Merriam-Webster.
• Experience using Submittable to evaluate submissions.
• An appreciation for the sublime.

To Apply

Please send us a one-page résumé and brief cover letter detailing why you would like to read for Tulipwood. Let us know what types of poems and stories make you tick, and the most recent book you finished.

seedfall is Tulipwood's annual journal of poetry and prose by women and nonbinary and trans writers.

We invite you to submit work on this year's theme: Lore. 

Lore is story—both true and imagined. Lore carries connotations of family myth-making, of cultural wisdom, of shared ethics. It is knowledge gained through study. “Lore” shares a root with “learn.” Mythology travels alongside lore, with elements of whimsy, memoir, and otherworldliness. 

In the tradition of “Turn of the Screw,” tell us a story within a story. Bring us into the hand-told tale passed down from generations, the anecdote, the vignette sanded smooth by Time, where the act of remembering and retelling, with no strict allegiance to fact or to fiction, is our resistance.

What customs and experiences have shaped you? Send us your musings on fact versus fiction, your own personal mythologies and the secrets you have been waiting to share. We can create our own lore just as easily as we can live by another’s. To quote bell hooks, “We chart our lives by everything we remember—from the mundane moment to the majestic. We know ourselves through the art and act of remembering.”

Submission Guidelines                 

Tulipwood Books is a developmental-editing press. We work with authors to develop work toward publication, and we're excited to get the chance to collaborate with you. 

For seedfall, we only consider work from women and trans and nonbinary people. Please respect this constraint. See our other submission calls for opportunities open to people of all genders.

Submissions

Please send only previously unpublished work: 3-5 poems (totaling no more than 10 pages), or one prose piece (and 3000 words or less), along with a cover letter, short bio, and any questions that you might have for us, via our Submittable portal.

• .docx or .pdf format for writing
• Please start each new poem on a new page.
• Use a 12-point font or larger, and a standard typeface like Times New Roman or Aptos.
• Please submit writing that you are willing to develop with an editor. 

Collaboration

• If your work is chosen for publication, we will notify you via Submittable and contact you via email with our edits.
• Your work will not be published until all edits are approved by both author and editor.
• Please consider buying a back issue to get a sense of what we publish. Find out more about the journal and the press at our website: tulipwood.org

Policies

• Tulipwood Books retains North American First Serial Rights for all accepted work. Rights revert to the author upon publication.
• We do consider previously-published work, but you must provide acknowledgment and written proof that you retain the rights to the work.
• We do accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us immediately If your work is accepted elsewhere. Once we accept your work, we expect that you will withdraw it from consideration elsewhere.
• There is no guarantee of publication.

Terms of Use

• No hate speech. This includes: racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, ableism, or any other oppressive or shameful language of any kind.
• No sexual violence. Other violence is also not recommended.
• No depictions of self-harm, suicide, or suicidal ideation. No exceptions.
• No AI-generated or AI-collaborated work. This should go without saying.

Tulipwood Books is a developmental-editing poetry press. We work with authors to develop a full-length manuscript toward publication, and we're excited to get the chance to collaborate with you. Please read more about the press at our website: tulipwood.org

Submissions are open to adults who live in the United States (this is for legal and tax reasons). We read on a rolling basis, and all manuscripts receive editorial feedback. If you wish to forgo feedback, please indicate this in your cover letter. We aim to respond to all submissions within one year.

Please send 10 pages of poetry and a 500-word description of the project, along with any questions that you might have for us. 

This is not a vanity press—we develop poetry, not product. Our focus is on collaboration with poets to co-create works of literary art. 

We do not consider previously-published manuscripts. The individual poems contained in the collection may be published elsewhere.

Project Proposal

 Submit 10 pages of poetry from a manuscript in-progress. 

• .docx or .pdf format
• Please start each new poem on a new page.
• Use a 12-point font or larger.

Provide a 500-word max. description of the project and your goals for collaboration with an editor.

Policies

• We charge a $20 reading fee, to support the operations of the press.
• All authors receive editorial feedback on their 10 pages, unless otherwise requested.
• Please indicate if you prefer general critique or line edits.
• All poems will be individually considered for development toward publication in our annual journal seedfall.
• There is no guarantee of publication.   

Collaboration

• If your manuscript is chosen for development, we will contact you for a video call to discuss the shape of our work together and what to expect from us as a press.
• We will communicate via email and text, meet regularly on video call, and share files via Google Drive.   

Compensation

• Full-length book authors receive ten free print copies of their book and percentage profit share.
• Contributors to seedfall are currently uncompensated, but it's our goal to change that.

 Terms of Use

• Please submit only work that you are willing to develop and publish with Tulipwood Books.
• Poems may have appeared individually in journals, but as a whole this project is previously-unpublished.
• At this time, we are open only to adult (18+) persons residing in the United States.
• Please make sure that you've read and understand our policies below. Any work that violates these policies will be destroyed without acknowledgement or refund.
• No hate speech. This includes: racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, ableism, or any other oppressive or shameful language of any kind.
• No sexual violence. Other violence is also not recommended.
• No depictions of self-harm, suicide, or suicidal ideation. No exceptions.
• No AI-generated or AI-collaborated work. This should go without saying.