What sort of books are we interested in publishing?
We’re starting small, with hopes of growing. Initially, we plan to publish one or two books a year, beginning with literary fiction (novels and story collections) and narrative nonfiction (memoirs, essay collections, and hybrid works).
We like lyrical writing. We like character-driven fiction that holds its characters with compassion and narrative nonfiction that dives into difficult questions and holds paradoxical truths. We love gorgeous prose combined with complex characters and stories. We’re less concerned with plot. As is probably evident, we like symbolism. We like formal experimentation that draws the reader deeper into the worlds of the characters—think Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum’s Madeleine is Sleeping, Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Justin Torres’ We the Animals, or Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body. Contemporary nonfiction books we’ve loved are Saeed Jones’ How We Fight for Our Lives, Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Melissa Febos’ Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, Justin Taylor’s Riding with the Ghost, Sarah Polley’s Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory, and Casey Park’s Diary of a Misfit: a Memoir and a Mystery. We like writing that tunnels deep, holds mystery, explores the fluidity of identity, and delves into our connectedness. Writing that asks big questions and provides no easy answers. We’re drawn to empathy, liminality, mixedness. We like emotional immediacy with a contemplative balance. Urgency weighted by a larger vision. Writers who beautifully articulate the fall out of self, into oneness. Writers who possess a poet’s vision. As Mary Oliver writes, “Poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”
We like artivist books. Artivism, in the words of Eve Ensler, has all the ingredients of activism, but is charged with the wild creations of art…where edges are pushed, imagination is freed, and a new language emerges altogether. We like books that hold the ways in which America fails side by side with the spaces in which the Beloved Community breathes. We hope to publish writers, who, “like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others”, as James Baldwin writes at the end of The Fire Next Time.
We want to read writing that moves, connects, fills, empties, enlarges, and transforms.
We’d love to read:
- books that straddle borders, with characters and stories from the in between (cultures, countries, ethnicities, races, faiths, identities). We encourage submissions from writers within the LGBTQIA+, immigrant, and BIPOC communities.
- first books from writers who are 40+
- books from writers living with a chronic illness or disability
- books that don’t fit neatly into traditional publishing, but aren’t formally experimental enough for small presses focused on experimental work
- books from writers who want to be a part of a cooperative community
Submission guidelines:
Freedom Tunnel Press is an independent not-for-profit hybrid press. We offer a much needed alternative in a rapidly changing publishing landscape. You, the author, invest in your publishing package up front, but unlike traditional publishing, you retain 60% of the net profits on your print books and 70% of the net profits (minus a small distribution fee) on your ebooks. We fund the most costly aspects of the publishing process: expert editing, cover design and book layout, and book marketing and social media planning.
We are currently accepting literary fiction and narrative nonfiction manuscripts. Use the form below to send your submission. Your cover letter should discuss why you believe your book is a good fit for Freedom Tunnel Press and include a brief synopsis and bio.
Attach the first chapter or first 7,000 words of your completed manuscript as a Word document attachment. Submissions should be in Times New Roman 12-point font, double-spaced with 1-inch margins. Insert page numbers in the top right corners. If we feel your book is a good fit for Freedom Tunnel Press, we will request the full manuscript. As long as you follow our submission guidelines, we will respond to your submission within six weeks.