Little Pigeon Chapbook Series

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About | Why Little Pigeon? | Reading Period | Current Status | Publication | Submission Guidelines | Chapbooks in the Series | Electric Book Award

About the Little Pigeon Chapbook Series

Why Is the Series Called Little Pigeon?

Once upon a time, our scientific + historical brains accidentally made a press that ended up being Nikola Tesla-themed. There are of course complications with this, as Tesla was by no means a perfect individual (sigh, no human in history is perfect), but here we are, decades later. Most of our journals, series titles, and projects are given names that have to do with Tesla inventions. This one is a little different—this one gets its name from a Tesla trait.

In Nikola Tesla’s later life, suffering from mental illness and scientific blacklisting by Big Science, he claims that his only friends were pigeons. He talked to them, fed them, named them, read to them, sat for hours in the park watching and conversing with them. This series is named in honor of those little guys who helped buoy the genius of just one person who changed the world forever. This is what we want our little pigeons to do: fly out into the wilds to change one reader’s mind in order to change the world, little by little, feather by feather. [Back to Top]

Reading Period

Submissions open: Year-round
Selections made: Within 6 months
Publication: 2026/2027/2028
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Current Status

Submissions are now open year-round. Submissions from the past reading periods are currently being read; please refrain from asking for status updates. [Back to Top]

Publication

Selected manuscripts receive book publication on Alternating Current Press, which includes distribution through Ingram, Asterism, and all major online retailers. Publication is in paperback and ebook formats, with possible audiobook publication, as well, and includes 10 complimentary paperback copies, a complimentary digital copy in all formats, and 30% net royalties. Publication also includes our standard publicity package, including a press kit, a book-club reading guide, a press release, multiple mailing-list email blasts, social media, review and contest copies, and more. We generally select about 4 to 6 manuscripts per year for publication from our open-reading submissions. [Back to Top]

Submission Guidelines

• We’re seeking chapbook-length manuscripts that have a single theme of some sort. We are seeking themed or linked pieces with a hook, and we are especially interested in themes with a historical or science bent. We are not interested in material that is not linked in some obvious way.
• Please note the chapbooks in this series are 4” x 6”, with 3” x 5” of working text space. Long lines will get broken, and horizontal concrete poetry or writing with a large shape will not work in this space. Prose forms and left-aligned forms with shorter lines work best in this space.
• All genres, styles, and subjects considered that can work within a small setting, including poetry, hybrid, prose poems, experimental, flash stories, flash memoir, one-act plays, textual/visual, etc. Choose the category of best fit.
• Chapbooks should be between-ish 10-ish to 40-ish pages, for a soft guideline.
• Manuscripts must be geared toward an adult readership. We do not publish books for children.
• All work must be in English and must be the author’s own. Single work by multiple authors considered. We will also consider reliable side-by-side (English and a second language) translations for this category. We do not consider A.I.-generated works.
• These manuscripts are not read incognito. It doesn’t matter if your identifying information is (or isn’t) inside your submission file, as long as your Submittable contact information is correct.
• If you need to adjust a submission, please use the Request to Edit option through Submittable. Please don’t request to edit for minor flaws, however—all accepted work will go through an editing process and will have the chance to be updated before publication, and your work will not be disqualified for a missing comma.
• All authors must be at least 18 to submit.
• Simultaneous submissions allowed. Please withdraw your manuscript through Submittable if it is accepted elsewhere.
• Previously published pieces are considered if they have never been published as a group in a standalone print volume.
• Submit via Submittable only. We do not accept email submissions. Please note that we have rolling submissions that sometimes close at the end of one month and reopen at the beginning of the next month to help us regulate flow. If the portal isn’t open, please don’t email us; just come back later.
• Straight or scholarly nonfiction should have proper citations.
• There is an $8.99 fee for each chapbook submitted. You may submit as many times as you’d like, but each submission must be made separately with a separate fee. The fee helps us with needed administration and book production costs, and we pay our readers for their time and effort, but it’s not meant to be too inhibitive. If you are unable to pay, please email us for an alternative submission method.
• Each paid submission comes with a digital copy of our latest Little Pigeon chapbook, currently black has every right to be angry, a collection of poetry about the historical and contemporary experience of being Black in the United States, by Ashley Elizabeth ($7.99 value). There is an additional option to purchase the winning Electric Book Award print book (publishing in 2027/2028) as an add-on for a deep discount ($6.99 off the final cover price, U.S. shipping only). If there is no winner selected for a chosen year, advance book purchases will roll over to the next year. If you purchase this option, please make sure to keep your Submittable mailing address current in your profile.
• We will send a response to every submission, and we try our best to respond within 6 months. Form response only, unless we are interested in publishing your book. We are regretfully unable to provide feedback. If you have not heard back after 6 months, please feel free to follow up (kindly), but more than likely, we’re just running behind, so thank you for your patience.
• All manuscripts submitted through this portal automatically qualify for the annual Electric Book Award, with no separate submission process. Please see the EBA paragraph at the bottom of this page or the EBA website page for more information.
• We acknowledge that we are headquartered on what should be Arapaho land with a warehouse on a street that is instead named for a dead white male president who owned enslaved people and severed Native American Nations apart irrevocably and an office on a street named after the very People whose land was stolen. To honor the reparations that this entire country needs to make, Black writers and Native American Indigenous (United States and Canada) writers may submit appropriate manuscripts for free to this open-reading period (please note that if the portal is not open, then we have reached our free-submission monthly cap until the beginning of the next month).
• If you’re ready to submit, head on over to Submittable. [Back to Top]

Chapbooks in the Little Pigeon Series

• black has every right to be angry: Poems by Ashley Elizabeth
• Letterlocking: Poems by Stephanie Staab
• Homeslice: Monologues of Millennialhood by Dayton J. Shafer
• Ox: Experimental Micropoems by Ryan Ridge
• Loving Monsters: Flash Stories by Laura Eppinger

Electric Book Award

All chapbooks in all genres that are submitted through this portal qualify for the annual Electric Book Award. The EBA is an editorial prize that is selected in December from the manuscripts that we have accepted over the preceding year. Submissions that have not yet been read by December roll over to qualify for the following year’s prize. There is no separate submission process for the EBA. All chapbooks submitted through the above portal, along with all book-length manuscript submissions, automatically qualify for consideration for the EBA if accepted by our press.

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