Submission Guidelines 

Yearling publishes unsolicited poetry, and poetry from our community of working writers, once a year in December. 

• Submissions are open year round and each submission receives feedback from our editors. 
• Yearling encourages simultaneous submissions for previously unpublished work. We do not consider sharing your poem on a blog, social media account, or online group as published. 
• If your work is accepted by another online or print publisher, journal, or magazine please withdraw your submission through Submittable.
• If you are withdrawing one or more poems from a group in a submission, you do not have to withdraw the entire submission, rather, notify us in a note through Submittable. 
• Contributors will receive 1 copy of the journal upon publication. We hope to be able to pay poets by the end of the third year of publication. 

Poems 

The poems that move us most are the poems that make us forget that we are reading a poem. We believe any style, tone, form, subject matter has that potential. At this time we print in text only in Yearling. 

For free feedback, please send us 1 poem at a time. If you’d like to send us more poems, we charge a fee to pay the editors who are providing feedback. It’s $10 to submit 3 poems. If you send multiple poems without paying, we will read the first one. Due to the volume of poems we receive, we ask that you only do a submission for free feedback once during a three month time frame.

The working poet is of particular importance to us. We define a working poet as a poet who doesn’t make their living from writing or the teaching of writing. Each issue will include 20 poets from our community of working writers and 20 poets from outside of that community, including those who happen to make their living from writing and teaching writing. 

If you are interested in joining our community, check us out here!

Response Time 

Yearling’s readers and editors are shooting for the quickest possible response time. Since we provide feedback to every submission, we cannot say for certain how long this will take. Poems accepted for publication do not receive feedback and acceptance letters will be sent out by Oct 1 of the year of submission.  

Feedback 

Aside from a chance to be published, Yearling provides poets who do not have access to a workshop or a community the opportunity to get feedback on their work. Please do not submit to us unless you are comfortable hearing constructive feedback on your work.  We value the time and energy you put into your work. Please be aware that we do not participate in an ongoing dialogue about a poem, but you are welcome to resubmit a piece as many times as you would like, as long as it is once within a three-month time frame.

Rights and Rules 

We require First Rights (the first publisher to publish these poems publicly). All rights revert to the authors upon publication. We also require Non-Exclusive Electronic Rights, so that we can share your poem through our digital platforms.

We welcome submissions from international authors but are unable to offer free shipping for copies heading outside of the domestic United States at this time.  

Our Team 

Managing Editor: Kevin Nance

Kevin is a photographer, arts journalist and poet in Lexington. He has published widely in newspapers and magazines including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and Poets & Writers. He also has work in many literary journals, including The North American Review, Poet Lore, Willawaw, Still: The Journal and Salvation South. His four books include the poetry collection SMOKE, published last year by Accents Publishing. 

Owner/Editor: Christopher McCurry 

Christopher McCurry is an award winning teacher and writer living in Lexington, KY. In 2015, he cofounded Workhorse, a publishing company and community for working writers. He’s the creator of The Poetry Gauntlet and the Young Writers Conference and lives in Lexington, KY with his wife, daughter, son, and two dogs. You can purchase his full-length collections Open Burning and The Gospel of God Boy from Accents Publishing.