Parlor Press is an independent publisher and distributor of scholarly and trade books in high quality print and digital formats. The Press will consider submissions from prospective authors or literary agents, subject to the guidelines below or as otherwise indicated on a series node. All submissions should be targeted specifically for one of our existing book series. Each submission accepted for review undergoes peer review by scholars or other acknowledged experts or published authors. The review process is rigorous. Turnaround time for initial review is prompt (usually three months or less). Parlor Press's editors may decide that a submission needs further work before it receives consideration for outside review.

The Press is especially interested in considering outstanding new work by emergent and diverse scholars and writers, as well as work that takes unique advantage of digital formats enabled by emergent technologies.

The Press will not review work submitted simultaneously for consideration by another publisher.

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Subject Areas

We are interested in submissions whose focus and readership crosses traditional boundaries in the humanities. Our existing series cover this range of topics and genres:

  • art history
  • communication
  • complexity theory
  • composition
  • cross-cultural rhetorics
  • digital culture
  • electracy
  • feminist rhetorics and theory
  • film theory
  • game studies
  • Internet studies
  • literacy
  • literary theory
  • literary studies
  • new media theory
  • multimedia
  • pedagogy
  • poetry (Free Verse Editions)
  • rhetorical theory
  • rhetorics of race, gender, or class
  • rhetoric of science and technology
  • technical writing
  • technology
  • transmedia studies
  • visual rhetoric
  • writing

Current Series

We consider new work well suited to one of our current series:

Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition
Edited by Steve Parks, Jessica Pauszek, Kristi Girdharry, and Charles Lesh

Comics and Graphic Narratives
Edited by Sergio Figueiredo, Jason Helms, and Anastasia Salter

Electracy and Transmedia Studies
Edited by Jan Rune Holmevik and Cynthia Haynes

Free Verse Editions
Edited by Jon Thompson

Illuminations: A Series on American Poetics
Edited by Jon Thompson

Inkshed: Writing Studies in Canada
Edited by Roger Graves and Heather Graves

Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition
Edited by Thomas Rickert and Jennifer Bay

New Media Theory
Edited by Byron Hawk

Reference Guides to Rhetoric and Composition
WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press, edited by Charles Bazerman, Anis Bawarshi, and Mary Jo Reiff

Renaissance and Medieval Studies
Edited by Charles Ross

Second Language Writing
Edited by Paul Kei Matsuda

Studies in Rhetorics and Feminisms
Edited by Cheryl Glenn and Shirley Wilson Logan

Visual Rhetoric
Edited by David Blakesley

Working and Writing for Change
Edited by Steve Parks and Jessica Pauszek

Writing Program Administration
Edited by Chris Carter and Laura Micciche

Writing Spaces 
Edited by Dana Driscoll, Matthew Vetter, and Mary Stewart

The X-Series
Edited by Jordan Frith

Discontinued Series

Rhetoric of Science and Technology
Edited by Alan Gross

Writing Travel
Edited by Jeanne Moskal 

Free Verse Editions and New Measure Poetry Prize

Please visit our New Measure Poetry Prize page for full directions.

Format for Submissions

To ensure timely consideration of your proposed work, please provide the information outlined below. Please do not submit unsolicited complete manuscripts. It helps your case to know about the series and its guidelines as well. Some series have more particular submission guidelines. Your prospectus (not counting your vita, resume, or sample chapters) should be no longer than 2,000 words. (Poets, please note that the submission guidelines for Free Verse Editions are somewhat different. Review those guidelines here). This prospectus, which can take the form of a letter, should cover the following:

  • the names of the author(s) or editor(s);
  • the complete title and subtitle;
  • the length or proposed length;
  • the content of the book including your aims in writing it; the book's organization, including chapter summaries, if appropriate; your primary findings, arguments, or themes; its genre; the sources used in your research, if applicable; and the relationship or similarity your work has to other writing in its field or genre;
  • the intended audience or markets for your book, including courses for which the book might be used as a text or collateral reading and organizations or groups that might be interested in reading it;
  • the book's competitors in its respective field or genre.
  • the ways that the book complements or extends the themes or aims of Parlor Press as an independent and progressive publisher;
  • any features in the proposed manuscript that will require special attention in the design and production of your book, such as photographs, line drawings, or other illustrations; charts, graphs, or tables; technical or foreign languages; complex mathematical or scientific data; and
  • the status of your manuscript, including how much of it has been written and when you expect to finish writing it.

Please include with your proposal a copy of your current vita or resume, as well as those for any co-authors or editors. If relevant, enclose a copy of the table of contents of the proposed work, preferably annotated. You may include a sample chapter from the manuscript, if available. Please double-space all sample chapters.

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Where and How to Submit

You may submit your prospectus and supporting material electronically or in print.

  • Electronic submissions should be in pdf, doc, docx, odf, rtf, html, or other accessible format and may be sent as an email attachment to the series editors or David Blakesley, editor@parlorpress.com. Please combine all materials into one file where possible or combine multiple files into a .zip file. You may also use Dropbox or Google Drive (use david.blakesley@gmail.com as the share-with email address).
  • Paper submissions may be sent to the following address. Please include an email address so that we can contact you.
Parlor Press
3015 Brackenberry Drive
Anderson SC 29621