Bull City Press is pleased to announce that we will be publishing three chapbooks submitted during our summer 2018 Chapbook Open Reading Period: a fiction chapbook from Sian Griffiths, a creative non-fiction title from John LaPine, and a collection of poetry by Hannah VanderHart.

Siân Griffiths lives in Ogden, Utah, where she directs the graduate program in English at Weber State University. Her work has appeared in The Georgia ReviewCincinnati ReviewAmerican Short FictionNinth Letter, Indiana Review, and The Rumpus, among other publications. Her debut novel, Borrowed Horses (New Rivers Press), was a semi-finalist for the 2014 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Currently, she reads fiction as part of the editorial team at Barrelhouse.  For more information, please visit sbgriffiths.com and follow her on twitter @borrowedhorses — The Drum, Like the Heart, Keeps Faulty Time, coming in 2019-2020.

John LaPine has an MA in Creative Writing & Pedagogy from Northern Michigan University (NMU), and volunteered as Associate Editor of creative nonfiction & poetry at Passages North, NMU’s literary journal, for three years. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in: Foliate Oak Literary Journal, Rhythm & Bones, The Rising Phoenix Review, yell/shout/scream, Hot Metal Bridge, Glint Literary Journal, Apofenie, The /Temz/ Review, Petrichor: A Journal of Text & Image, Glass: A Journal of Poetry‘s “Poets Resist” series, Under the Gum Tree, & Midwestern Gothic. He is a “Best of the Net” nominee for 2018, editor of the upcoming podcast Queer Americans, and currently teaches English at Butte College.  For more information please visit https://johnlapine.wordpress.com //  and @JohnLaPine on Twitter — An Unstable Container, coming 2019-2020.

Hannah VanderHartHannah VanderHart lives in Durham, NC. She has her MFA from George Mason University, and is currently at Duke University writing her dissertation on women poets in the seventeenth century. She has poems and reviews recently published and forthcoming at The McNeese Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, The Greensboro Review, Poetry Northwest and American Poetry Review.  More at: hannahvanderhart.com & @hmvanderhart  What Pecan Light, coming 2019-2020; “The Light Has Always Been Going Down,” broadside released August 2018,


Along with these three exciting chapbooks, we’d like to take this opportunity to announce a change we are making with our flash-format journal Inch.  Inch will continue to be a quarterly journal but will now be formatted as a micro-chapbook and each issue will feature work by a single author. The reformatted Inch will continue to feature poetry, creative non-fiction, and flash fiction, and will devote one micro-chapbook each year to a North Carolina writer. Still keeping to the ideals of flash writing, Inch will showcase work that flourishes within the constraints of brevity.

This evolved version of Inch allows us to select a second poet from the outstanding work submitted for this summer’s Open Reading Period. We are happy to announce that work by poet C.T. Salazar will be featured in the upcoming Inch #39. 

C.T. Salazar is a latinx poet and translator living in Mississippi. He’s the editor-in-chief of Dirty Paws Poetry Review, and the 2017 AWP Intro Journals Poetry Winner. His poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Grist, Tampa Review, Noble Gas QTRLY, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Matador Review, and elsewhere. He’s an MFA candidate and children’s librarian.  Follow Salazar at @CTsalazar_  — This Might Have Meant Fire (Inch #39) available June, 2019.

When we opened submissions again this year under the “pay what you want” format, we committed to publishing one collection.  The support we received from our community of readers and writers—and the stunning breadth of talent—allowed us to increase that to three chapbooks.

A hearty thanks to everyone who embraced our vision for this reading period– one of access for all writers, regardless of socioeconomic status.  We will hold another open reading period in summer, 2019.