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• Yearling encourages simultaneous submissions for previously unpublished work.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. 
• Contributors will receive 1 copy of the journal upon publication. We hope to be able to pay poets by the end of the fifth 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. 

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 and $20 to submit up to 6. 

Due to the volume of poems we receive, we ask that you only submit 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.

Our Team 
Managing Editor: Manuel J. Grimaldi
Manny Grimaldi is from Louisville, Kentucky. He appeared online in Club Plum Literary Journal Vol 2 Issue 1, 2021. He appeared on Laverne’s Writing Workshop on RADIOLEX as a guest poet on two occasions, and works with Workhorse Writers generating feedback for submitting poets, and as managing editor for The Yearling. He loves to tell stories.

Editor: Jon Thrower

Jon Thrower has a long history in underground publishing beginning with ephemeral zine culture dating back to the late 1980s with the zine, No Watches, No Clocks, No Calendars. He traveled extensively around the US as a drummer and along the way participated in zine-making, publishing, and distribution activities from San Francisco to NYC but has never set foot in North Dakota or Vermont. He has worked as an editor for small press publishing outlets including Ligature, Prescription Strength Poetry, The Legendary, Girls with Insurance, Univocal Publishing, and the special interest group Handcrafted Rhetorics. His editing work spans the modal landscape from poetry and fiction to research, contemporary essays, and critical theory. In addition to his editorial role at Workhorse, focusing on The Yearling and LexPoMo, he is the editor of Pegasus, the journal of the Kentucky State Poetry Society. He is a writer, artist, musician, educator, and serious cook, currently doing the dishes in Lexington, Kentucky where he lives with Karen, Merdle, and a 1965 Ludwig Club Date drum kit in Champagne Sparkle.

Editor: Arwen Careaga: 

Owner/Editor: Christopher McCurry 

Christopher McCurry grew up right outside of Lexington, Kentucky in the small town of Paris. In the seventh grade he entered one of his poems in a contest and won a medal. He’s since lost the medal but still remembers the poem. His poetry has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and featured on NPR’s On Point as a Best Book of 2016 for his chapbook of marriage sonnets Nearly Perfect Photograph.  His first full-length collection, Open Burning, was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer award. A graduate of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College and a high school English teacher, he spends his time playing board games, skateboarding, and going on adventures with his daughter Abra and his wife Meredith. In 2015, Christopher co-founded Workhorse, a publishing company and community for working writers. He believes everyone should write poems and that everyone can. You can find him online at workhorsewriters.com.

If you are ready to submit: