This division of BrickHouse Books is dedicated to publishing poetry from an LBGTQIA+ perspective. In addition to publishing book-length manuscripts, Stonewall also runs an annual chapbook competition.
Note: Submissions to Stonewall (both ordinary and contest submissions) are CLOSED.
Submitting your manuscript:
To submit a manuscript, follow our usual guidelines, and be certain to tell us you are interested in publishing under Stonewall in your cover letter.
The Annual Stonewall Chapbook Competition:
The Stonewall Chapbook Competition is dedicated toward highlighting the voices of the LGBTQIA+ community. The competition offers authors a chance to have a chapbook published by BrickHouse Books’ Stonewall imprint. This is a wonderful opportunity for LGBTQIA+ authors to have their shorter works of poetry or short fiction published (BHB’s normal submissions guidelines prefer a minimum of 50 pages; Stonewall is 20-30 pages).
The prize is: publication of your chapbook, along with a featured online press release announcing both your win and the release of your chapbook.
Your judges are: Senior staff members of BrickHouse Books and a special guest judge.
Contest Dates: June 1 – August 15
Winner is declared in: December.
Stonewall Competition Submission Requirements:
- 20-30 page manuscript of poetry or short fiction
- .doc or docx only, sent as an email attachment (email address below).
- Title page must include your contact information: full name, mailing address, email, phone number
- A cover letter introducing your entry
- $10 entry fee (send check, payable to BrickHouse Books, Inc., to address below)
We’d prefer submissions and fees to be sent through Submittable…
…however, we do know that the site is missing certain accessibility features that make it impossible to submit to us. In these cases, you may absolutely send us your queries and manuscripts to:
clarindaharriss13 @ gmail.com (Remove the spaces.)
Be sure to tell us it’s a submission to the Stonewall Competition in your subject line.
Send $10 entry fee to:
Clarinda Harriss, Director
BrickHouse Books, Inc.
306 Suffolk Road
Baltimore, MD 21218
Be sure to let us know the check is paired with your email submission!
Current and Previous Stonewall Chapbook Competition Winners:
Kenneth Pobo, Lavender Fire, Lavender Rose
Teresa Stores, Cemetery Walks
Hunter Liguore, The Agony
Chazz Chitwood, Furry Slut
Kathi Wolfe, The Uppity Blind Girl Poems
Jim Elledge, Into the Arms of the Universe
Janell Moon, Lesbian Speaker’s Bureau
Rane Arroyo, The Naked Thief
Jeff Mann, Bliss
Want a sense of Stonewall? Here are three poems from a previous winner, Kathi Wolfe!
Flying
At age nine, I didn’t think
I’d live past ten, or at most, eleven.
No blind eyes beckoned
from the screen on the TV in our den,
where I wrote Braille Christmas cards
to my best friend and Little Stevie Wonder.
Stevie was three whole years ahead of me
and made the kids clap and dance
on American Bandstand. Maybe
he’d get old–like Ray Charles.
I couldn’t sing any more
than the bad guys could shoot straight,
and everyone knew that only Ray,
among the sightless, was older than twelve.
But, I looked forward to my death,
why would I want to become ancient
like my mother, who I knew, was at least 17?
Everyone in town,
firemen, my friends in the Brownies,
every dog worth her salt,
would turn out for my funeral,
which would last nine innings
or even longer.
The crowd would be as huge
as the Beatles concert at Shea Stadium.
Nine, I felt, would be a good time to kick off.
I still believed in Santa,
my parakeet hung on to my every word,
I’d never get the curse or worry that I was queer.
If I got bored, I could fly like a fidgety bat
past the sun
through the nine planets
where God, white cane in hand, jumped rope
and I’d always be nine.
Blind Spot
I came out,
snapping my fingers
in tune with my
lavender inner vision,
Sappho with her cane,
taking on the night –
a true-blue dyke
to watch out for –
You saw a sightless
damsel in distress,
at sea in the darkness,
sexy as a nun’s lingerie.
Uppity Writes on Tinseltown’s Facebook Wall
Gods of Milk Duds and Coca-Cola soaked endings,
from which sighted and unsighted emerge, blinking,
in the dark, my love life is a B picture with no
coming attractions. No alluring strangers,
just safe commuters on this train. When I woo
Grace Kelly, the lady vanishes. The gum
on the floor of your cineplexes sticks
to the soles of my ruby slippers.
Gods of pop-eyed paparazzi and strobe-lit carpet,
let me eat the Danish Audrey Hepburn wouldn’t touch,
don the dress Kate Hepburn wouldn’t wear,
dine with the company Garbo wouldn’t keep,
sing Garland to sleep during the restless night.
Let me be Frankie, dancing with Annette
on a beach blanket under starlight – no bingo –
before the mothers of America, until dawn,
when sighted and unsighted emerge into the light.
More works from Stonewall:
BrickHouse Books 