What sort of books are we interested in publishing?
We are an artivist small press. Artivism, in the words of V (formerly Eve Ensler), contains all the ingredients of activism, but is charged with the wild force of art—where edges are pushed, imagination is freed, and a new language emerges.
We are drawn to books that hold the ways in which America fails alongside the spaces in which the Beloved Community breathes. We seek writers who, as James Baldwin writes at the end of The Fire Next Time, “like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others.”
We are interested not only in publishing literature, but in amplifying voices from the in-between and building global networks of artivists and changemakers. Our first book, It’s Soulful and It’s Survival, is an oral history of four drag artivists in the U.S. South. Our second, The Understory: Roots of a New India, is an anthology of Indian and Indian-American artivists that centers on restorying narratives—the reclamation of voice and power within marginalized and underserved communities—and on bridge-building across religion, caste, politics, and other divides.
We’re preparing for summer publication with launches in Charlotte and India and building a global network of artivists and changemakers to share resistance and peacebuilding strategies, exchange resources, and foster collaboration.
We have additional artivist projects in development—and we remain open to new collaborations and submissions.
Use the form below to submit your work. Your cover letter should explain why your book is a strong fit for Freedom Tunnel Press and include a brief synopsis and bio.
What sort of writing are we drawn to?
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, Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!, Jordy Rosenberg’s Night Night Fawn, 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, Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Message, Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Lidia Yuknavitch’s Chronology of Water and Reading the Waves, Melissa Febos’ Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, 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. We want to read writing that moves, connects, fills, empties, enlarges, and transforms.
As Mary Oliver writes, “Poems are not words… but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread…”
We would especially love to read:
- Books that straddle borders, with characters and stories from the in between (cultures, countries, ethnicities, races, faiths, identities)
- Work by LGBTQIA+, immigrant, and BIPOC writers
- First books by writers 40+
- Work by writers living with chronic illness or disability
- Books that don’t fit neatly into traditional publishing books
- Writers interested in being part of a cooperative, artivist community
Submission Guidelines
Please submit:
- A cover letter (fit, synopsis, and brief bio)
- The first chapter or first 7,000 words of your completed manuscript
Format requirements:
- Word document
- Times New Roman, 12-point font
- Double-spaced, 1-inch margins
- Page numbers in the top right corner
If your project feels aligned, we will request the full manuscript. We aim to respond within six weeks to submissions that follow these guidelines.