A Toronto-based chapbook publisher, Anstruther Press is committed to publishing emerging and established writers alike. With an emphasis on poetry, our goal is to produce limited edition book objects that are both beautiful to hold and engaging to read.
Poetry Submissions
In an effort to remove barriers for BIPOC, Deaf, and Disabled authors, Anstruther Press is open to chapbook submissions year-round for authors who identify as BIPOC, Deaf, or Disabled. We are currently closed to general chapbook submissions. Our books run from 12-24 pages, and are eclectic in form and style. Please note that we only accept submissions from Canadian authors. Contact Jim Johnstone at anstrutherpress@gmail.com to submit.
Manifesto Submissions
We’d very much like to hear from poets who wish to make an argument about form or representation in Canadian Literature. Specifics are hard to provide, since the manner in which the arguments have proceeded thus far have been disparate, but here’s a guideline:
- Aim for 2000 words of prose, but less can work dependent upon what kind of work you’re doing.
- Have an argument / share an idea.
- Anti-manifestos are welcome! We really want to publish one of those. We’re aware of the fraught political history of aesthetic manifestos.
- Arguments do need to connect with poetry somehow, but this can be glancing if the argument works for us. For example, we’ve
never received a submission concerned with climate change, and we find this strange.
- Submissions should be previously unpublished, and directed to anstrutherpress@gmail.com. You can query first, or you can send your
generated document in the submission; we can deal with both.
Masthead
Jim Johnstone (Editor-in-Chief) is a Canadian poet, editor, and critic. He’s the author of five books of poetry, including The Chemical Life (Véhicule Press, 2017), Dog Ear (Véhicule Press, 2014), and Patternicity (Nightwood Editions, 2010). He’s also the recipient of a CBC Literary Award, The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, Matrix Magazine’s LitPop Award and Poetry's Editors Prize for Book Reviewing. Johnstone is currently the poetry editor at Palimpsest Press, and an associate editor at Representative Poetry Online. He lives in Toronto.
Erica Smith (Layout and Design) is a self-taught chapbook/broadside designer for Anstruther Press. She also designs knitwear patterns under the name ericaknits.
Ally Fleming (Publicity) is a poet who lives in Toronto. Her work has appeared in This Magazine, Canadian Jewish News, and the chapbooks The Worst Season (Anstruther Press, 2017) and What Happened Was: He Flew (Serif of Nottingham Editions, 2011).
Editorial Collective
Katie Fewster-Yan is a poet currently living in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Her poems have recently appeared in The Puritan and The New Quarterly. She was recently awarded the Thomas Morton Memorial Prize in Literary Excellence (2015). She also works as managing editor for Qwerty magazine.
Klara du Plessis is a poet and critic. Residing in Montreal, but growing up in Bloemfontein, South Africa, Afrikaans is her first language and its coexistence with English while writing embodies a personal form of linguistic history. Klara's chapbook, Wax Lyrical - shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award - was released by Anstruther Press in 2015. She curates the monthly, Montreal-based Resonance Reading Series, writes reviews on contemporary poetry, and published her poetic debut, Ekke, with Palimpsest Press in 2018. Follow her on Twitter.
Blair Trewartha's first book of poetry, Easy Fix, was published by Palimpsest Press in 2014, and shortlisted for the Relit Award. He is also the author of two chapbooks: Break In (Cactus Press, 2010), and Porcupine Burning (Baseline Press, 2012). He currently lives in Toronto where he works as a College English Instructor.
Daniel Scott Tysdal is the author of three books of poetry, Fauxccasional Poems (Icehouse 2015), The Mourner’s Book of Albums (Tightrope 2010), and Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method (Coteau 2006). Predicting received the ReLit Award for Poetry (2007) and the Anne Szumigalski Poetry Award (2006). His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, earning him honourable mention at the National Magazine Awards (2003) and Matrix's Lit Pop Award (2010). His poetry textbook, The Writing Moment, was published by Oxford University Press.
David Ly is the author of Mythical Man (2020), which was shortlisted for the 2021 ReLit Poetry Award, and Dream of Me as Water (2022), both published under the Anstruther Books imprint at Palimpsest Press. He is also co-editor (with Daniel Zomparelli) of Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022). David's poems have appeared in publications such as Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, PRISM International, and The Puritan, where he won the inaugural Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence. Twitter: @dlylyly.
Amanda Merpaw is a poet, writer, editor, and educator. Her writing has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, CV2, Grain, Literary Review of Canada, The Maynard, Prairie Fire, PRISM International, and Room. Her first chapbook, Put the Ghosts Down Between Us, was released in 2021 by Anstruther Press and her debut poetry collection is forthcoming with Palimpsest Press. She is currently a contributing editor at Arc Poetry Magazine and a PhD student at the University of Toronto.
Editor: Manifesto Series
Shane Neilson is a poet, physician, and scholar who completed his Ph.D. in McMaster's English and Cultural Studies Department in 2018 on the representations of pain in CanLit. Dysphoria (PQL) won the Hamilton Arts Council Literary Award for Poetry that same year. He published New Brunswick with Biblioasis in 2019. His practice is located in Guelph and he currently serves as an adjunct assistant clinical professor of medicine at McMaster University’s Waterloo campus. Shane got his start in chapbooks and has tried to repay that debt ever since. He takes pleasure in the self-bestowed title of “Manifestoist Editor.”