Submissions

We are happy to announce the return of the Noel Rowe Poetry Award in January 2025. The award is for first collection from an emerging poet of any age with the collection then to be published by Vagabond Press. Visit the award page for eligibility and entry information.

Please note, the Noel Rowe Poetry Award will replace our open call in January 2025.

July 2025 OPEN CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS

We will be accepting manuscripts again from July 1-15, 2025 (closes midnight AEST). We are looking for collections of short stories, essays, novellas, novels and poetry. We are always interested in works in translation from Asia Pacific.

Authors should be familiar with the type of work we publish before submitting work to us. We ask anyone submitting a manuscript for review order a copy of our anthology (or at least one of our books) from us in the six months before submitting the manuscript.

We're looking for poetry collections of 60-90 pages in length (approximately 30 lines per page). We're expanding our prose list at present and interested in fiction and non-fiction, especially shorter works of memoir and novellas.

Manuscripts must be by a single author.

Any use of copyright material (quoted, paraphrased, cut-up etc) or AI-generated text must be clearly referenced in the manuscript.

Please let us know if the manuscript has been previously submitted to other publishers.

 We do not accept manuscripts concurrently under offer to other publishers.

Any images the author wants to include must be copyright cleared by the author and they must have access to high resolution (300dpi) versions of the image.

Given the limited funding options available for small press publishing, if you have access to institutional funding, such as from a university publications subvention, please let us know. We're very keen to expand our list and create more space for new writing, but that is contingent on funding, especially for authors outside Australia.

We do not accept co-authored books or edited anthologies outside of funded creative partnerships.

If you have multiple unpublished manuscripts, only send one. 
We do not accept incomplete manuscripts and are at present not accepting chapbooks.

 Do not submit a manuscript that you plan on submitting elsewhere at the same time as we are reviewing your work. 
To submit your manuscript, send the following in a single PDF:

1. Cover letter – providing (a) the author’s contact details, including postal address, and real name if writing under a pen-name; (b) author bio and publishing history; (c) a brief synopsis of the work (please note if you have previously submitted the manuscript to a publisher); (d) a brief explanation of how publication will impact your career and why you want to publish with us.

2. The manuscript – remember to include a table of contents, list of acknowledgments for previous publications where applicable.

3. (Optional but recommended) Letter of support from a writer/editor/mentor familiar with your manuscript or work more broadly. Note if we are interested in publishing your collection, we will need a letter of support from a writer/editor/mentor for funding applications.

4. (Optional) Some recent publications have had a publishing subvention attached from an institution such as a university (for example, Wago’s Since Fukushima and Macken’s Our Concealed Ballast). If similar support via a university or other source is available or possible, let us know, especially if you hold a position at a university as a tenured/ongoing academic.

Formatting of the manuscript: if in doubt, keep it simple (A4 page, standard margins, standard font at 10 or 12pt). Please save and send the above as a single PDF using your family name + the title of the manuscript + the genre as the file name. (For example, ‘Farrugia_SearchHistories_fiction.pdf’, ‘Holt_ThreeBooks_poetry.pdf’.)

Please send submissions to <submissions[at]vagabondpress[dot]net>. Submissions won't be accepted outside the open call dates noted on this page.

We remain interested in forming a partnership with university-based creative writing schools wanting to develop and fund new works or a new list of works of poetry, prose and translations stemming from their faculty and program.