“In this book, Catherine Esposito Prescott assembles a glowing collection of poems that seam the quotidian with the ethereal; for this poet, they are one and the same. There is a gently probing curiosity to these poems, a faith pieced with wing, hedge, moon, and the tenderness of our own bodies.” —Emma Trelles
Central California poets invited to send poems
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and Gunpowder Press are joining together for the next Shoreline Voices Anthology. Poets living in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Kern, or Ventura counties are invited to submit 1-3 poems which feature the native flora of California, with a focus on the Central Coast. We are especially interested in poems aligned […]
Gary Soto’s DOWNTIME
The most recent addition to Gunpowder’s California Poets Series, Gary Soto’s Downtime is a collection of 47 new poem written during and inspired by the pandemic. Available now.
Gary Soto to judge 2023 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize
Submissions are open now for the 2023 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize. The editors are thrilled that Gary Soto will be our final judge this year. The Spacks Prize is awarded to a full-length manuscripts and includes publication, $1000, and 50 copies of the winning book. Read more here.
Anacapa Review now accepting submissions
The editors of Gunpowder Press are happy to announce a new online poetry journal, Anacapa Review. Anacapa Review will be published monthly, with the first issue appearing March 2023. We welcome submissions of poems, as well as proposals for reviews or poetry-related prose. Visit the Anacapa Review site for more.
Announcing Alta California Prize winners Florencia Milito and Gabriel Ibarra
The winners of the Alta California Prize, selected by Francisco Aragón from an incredibly rich collection of submissions, are Florencia Milito‘s Sor Juana and Gabriel Ibarra‘s On Display. Francisco also recognized Felipe De La Rosa‘s Summer Blooms in Paramount as an honorable mention. In addition to the winners and honorable mention, eight poets were distinguished […]
Congratulations, Emma Trelles!
Academy of American Poets has recognized as a Poet Laureate Fellow Emma Trelles, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Fellow! Emma is the series editor for Gunpowder’s Alta California Chapbook Prize. Gunpowder is committed to bringing the words of Latinx poets to as wide an audience as possible. Thank you to the Academy of American Poets for […]
Cheers to Madeline Miller, Santa Barbara’s First Youth Poet Laureate
Gunpowder Press welcomes Santa Barbara’s first Youth Poet Laureate, Madeline Miller! We are honored to present her poem below. america in june america, i love youwith no stars in my eyeslove like each cell of my own bodydying out of duty, letting me live. love like a mothercleaning the feces off her infant childboth of […]
Congratulations to Kundai Chikowero, Santa Barbara’s first Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador
Gunpowder Press welcomes our community’s first Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador, Kundai Chikowero! We are honored to present one of her poems here. The moon and her waves We are like the moon and the wavesA pull felt from millions awayRegardless left untouched Sustaining life around usThen devastating in wavestsunamisAnd bouts of anger An existence frighteningly […]
Final Days to Enter
The Barry Spacks Poetry Prize includes publication, $1000, and 50 copies of your book. We are thrilled to announce Danusha Lamerís as our final judge for 2022! Read more here.
Carol Decanio Abeles Emerging Poets Prize winners announced
Congratulations to winner Carol Ann Wilburn, and runners-up Susan Chiavelli, and Dairine Pearson! Read the selected poems here.
Carol Decanio Abeles Young Poets Prize winners
Congratulations, young poets! Read the winning poems submitted by participants in Santa Barbara County’s California Poets in the Schools program.
Announcing the Carol DeCanio Abeles Emerging Poets Prize
The Carol DeCanio Abeles Emerging Poets Prize offers 3 prizes, up to $500, for an original poem! Open to Santa Barbara County poets (age 18 or older) who have not yet published a full-length collection of poems. Send up to 3 poems per entry by March 15, 2022. Learn more here.
California Poets Series: Gatherer’s Alphabet by Susan Kelly-DeWitt
The first book in Gunpowder’s California Poets Series is Gatherer’s Alphabet, by Susan Kelly-DeWitt. These luscious poems feel like small museums of infinite wonder. Gallery, butterfly, stars in autumn. The wisdom of nature, the work of angels, what women endure—I love these poems. A timeless grace breathes through this marvelous book, this bounty you’ll be […]
Starting January 1, 2022: Spacks Prize open for manuscripts
The editors of Gunpowder Press are happy to announce the final judge for the 2022 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize is Danusha Laméris! She is the author of The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), which was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize and was a finalist for the […]
Like All Light
The winner of the 2021 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize, Todd Copeland’s Like All Light is now available! Order direct from Gunpowder Press here.
Big Enough for Words
The latest in the Shoreline Voices series and Gunpowder’s first online anthology, Big Enough for Words: Poems and Vintage Photographs from California’s Central Coast, co-edited by David Starkey, George Yatchisin and Chryss Yost, features poems responding to images from the Santa Barbara Public Library’s Edson Smith Collection. Read more.
Todd Copeland selected for 2021 Spacks Prize
The editors of Gunpowder Press are thrilled to announce that Todd Copeland’s Like All Light was selected by Lynne Thompson as winner of the 2021 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize.
First Latinx Chapbook Contest
Gunpowder Press invites Latinx poets who are current residents of California (age 18+) to submit to the first Gunpowder Latinx Poetry Chapbook contest. Poems may be submitted in English or Spanish. Selected manuscripts will be published in both English and Spanish. We especially encourage poets living on the Central Coast in Santa Barbara, Ventura, or San Luis Obispo counties […]
Alta California Chapbook Winners
Crystal AC Salas, author of Grief Logic, and Nicholas Reiner, author of Levitations will be featured readers for the Mission Poetry Series. Books are available now!
Spacks Prize Reading!
April 25, 2021 • 5:00-6:15 PDT
Save the date! Thanks to the post-geography wonder of Zoom, we will be celebrating our most recent Spacks Prize winner, Meghan Dunn for her manuscript Curriculum (2020 winner, selected by Jessica Jacobs), with ALL PREVIOUS SPACKS PRIZE WINNERS, including: Catherine Abbey Hodges for Instead of Sadness (2015 winner, selected by Dan Gerber) Kurt Olsson for […]
Curriculum
The 2020 Spacks Prize winning book, Curriculum by Meghan Dunn, is now available from Gunpowder Press. Congratulations, Meghan!
Peg Quinn Reading
Peg Quinn will be reading from her book Mother Lode on Sunday, February 21, at 3:00pm PST via Zoom. ZOOM LINK: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87928325934
Honoring David Case
In 2014, David Starkey founded Gunpowder Press with two immediate goals in mind. He wanted to publish the first books of Chryss Yost, who would later become Gunpowder’s Co-editor, and his late friend David Case. Wednesday, February 3, 2021, is the tenth anniversary of David’s death, and we mark his passing by lowering the price of his only book of poems, the timeless The Tarnation of Faust.
2020 Spacks Prize Winner: Meghan Dunn
Final Judge Jessica Jacobs has selected Curriculum, by Meghan Dunn of Brooklyn, New York, as the winner of the 2020 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize. The editors of Gunpowder Press are excited to publish this collection of timely and carefully-crafted poems. Read the judge’s response:
April is National Poetry Month
In celebration, Gunpowder Press is posting a poem a day to our Facebook and Instagram pages. Thank you, poets!
Jessica Jacobs to judge 2020 Spacks Prize
Gunpowder Press is honored to announce that Jessica Jacobs has agreed to be the final judge for the 2020 Spacks Prize. Jessica Jacobs is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going, published by Four Way Books, was named one of Library Journal‘s Best Poetry Books of 2019. Her debut collection, Pelvis with Distance, won the New Mexico […]
2020 Spacks Prize open now!
We are excited to announce that Glenn Freeman’s book, Drinking with O’Hara, winner of the 2019 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize, is forthcoming soon from Gunpowder Press. The 2020 Spacks Prize will be accepting submissions from January 1 through April 30, 2020.
Call for Poems: Edson Smith Collection
Gunpowder Press invites poets from Santa Barbara or adjacent counties to submit 1-3 poems inspired by photographs in the historic Edson Smith Photograph collection for a Shoreline Voices Anthology. As described on the collection’s webpage: The Edson Smith Photograph collection contains nearly 1,500 early images of Santa Barbara County dating from the 1870s-1940s, many of […]
2018 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize Winner Announced
Gunpowder Press is thrilled to announce that Michelle Bonczek Evory is the winner of the fourth annual Barry Spacks Poetry Prize for her book, The Ghosts of Lost Animals. Final judge Lee Herrick says of this book: Michelle Bonczek Evory’s The Ghosts of Lost Animals is full of risk, reward, gravity, invention, and surprise. There is a hunger […]
