River River Books

08/22/2025

Guess what, y'all?!?!? We've chosen the most amazing, awesome, incredible, badass four books to add to our catalog! Read more about them here: https://riverriverbooks.beehiiv.com/p/announcing-summer-2025-open-reading-period-selections

08/06/2025

Our 2025 Summer Open Reading Period & Finalist list is here! We continue to receive more submissions every year. This year we received 425.

As we noted last year, we think it says something good about the world and about the poetry community that there are so many poets out there writing and putting books together. Our submissions remain fee optional, with no required payment. But we do accept tip jar donations, and this year, 275 of our submitters (about 65 percent) donated about $3800, an average of around $13 per donor.

We are beyond grateful for this generosity—honestly, we could not maintain the press without this kind of community support. A small press is a labor of love, certainly, but so many things we do require money: distribution, paying our amazing designer, giving our authors a small initial payment, printing, shipping, attending conferences like AWP, and more.

We read so many incredible manuscripts this summer, and here are our top twenty finalists, not including the four we have selected for publication (which we will announce soon!)—thank you for the chance to read your beautiful poems, images, lines. Seriously, we are still talking about some of your poems, and you made our final decisions so difficult! Thank you, amazing poets. Although these manuscripts were not our choices this time, we encourage you to watch for these books, and read these writers, because these titles will be on the bookstore shelves before you know it:

Thomas Snarsky
a few small muscles

Jasmine Khaliq
Somewhere Horses

Marilyn Johnson
Silent Car

Maureen Thorson
gloss

Monika Cassel
Long Line

Jennifer K. Sweeney
Redwood Communal

Amelie Langland
Alabama Tulip

Amanda Roth
Elegy for My Father’s God

Eli Rahm
Megafauna

Gauri Awasthi
The Mother Wound

Amish Trivedi
The Depression Era

Cynthia White
One Life to Live

Chris Corlew
LAKESHORE MONK

Megan Leonard
Mercy

Hannah Bonner
The Ordering of Vision

Emily Holland
Notifications On

Lawrence Di Stefano
AERATING THE FIELD

J-T Kelly
A Lighter Sentence

Tara Burke
Soft Neglect

Ja’net Danielo
Eclipse

07/02/2025

Cover reveals! Preorders! River River is utterly delighted by our next two books: Encounters for the Living and the Dead by Jameela Fay Dallis & Field Notes by E.G. Cunningham.

Both available for preorder now, publishing and shipping in September. https://riverriverbooks.beehiiv.com/p/fall-covers-reveal-preorders-for-jameela-f-dallis-s-encounters-for-the-living-and-the-dead-and-e-g-c

06/26/2025

Our summer reading period is open for five (5) more days (counting today). We want to read your poetry manuscript. Yes, yours! Yes, those poems!

No mandatory reading fee, a careful read from two thoughtful editors, the chance to join our growing catalog. Give us a shot!

06/21/2025

A week and a half left in this reading period! We want to read your amazing poetry manuscript!

We're open for 20 more days (counting today)!

If you're looking for a small press with two editors who will care deeply for your book, do give us a try. We're looking for (at least) two poetry collections to join our growing catalog.

06/11/2025

We're open for 20 more days (counting today)!

If you're looking for a small press with two editors who will care deeply for your book, do give us a try. We're looking for (at least) two poetry collections to join our growing catalog.

05/13/2025

Guess what?

We’re open for poetry manuscripts until the end of June! No required fee, we read them all, and we’ll notify everyone before we announce our selections. If you think a tiny press that focuses on care and transparency is a good fit for you and your work, send it our way!

05/02/2025

Amazing! So happy for Carla's book!!!

April's top ten from CLMP member publishers at Itasca Books. All available from Itasca Books at https://hubs.la/Q03ksmYZ0 CLMP is the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, a nonprofit helping independent literary presses thrive, more info at https://hubs.la/Q03kshKF0

CLMP Orison Books Neon Hemlock Press Rescue Press River River Books Sixteen Rivers Press Unbound Edition Press Noemi Press

02/06/2025

One of our two new ones!!

A new title from River River Books! Your Mother's Bear Gun: Poems, by Corrie Williamson, a recipient of the 2020 PEN Northwest/Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. Available through Itasca Books at https://bit.ly/40YYIuV

02/05/2025

Listen to Joe Wilkins discuss and share poems from his new book Pastoral, 1994! https://ofpoetrypodcast.com/2025/01/28/episode-66-joe-wilkins-of-pastoral-tender-models-of-masculinity-and-the-sonnet-haunted-prairies/

01/11/2025

More shenanigans from the RRB editors who just can't stop finding amazing books to publish.

05/03/2024

We're open! Send us your poetry manuscript!