All manuscripts should include a title page, table of contents, and an acknowledgements page (if applicable). No identifying information should be included in the submission itself, but an optional bio in the cover letter is encouraged.

Manuscripts should be paginated and formatted in a pleasant-to-read font (as in, not comic sans), with no more than one poem per page. Manuscripts should consist of approximately 48 – 100 pages of poetry (not including front and back matter). 

Ghost Peach Press accepts the $12 entry fee exclusively through our Submittable page. The entry fee is due at the time of submission. We believe in access to publication so please email us at coatofbirdseditors@gmail.com if the reading fee causes a financial burden.

This contest runs from June 1st, 2025 – October 1st, 2025. The winner will be announced no later than April 2025 and publication is expected in mid-2026.

We are now welcoming submissions of fiction in line with our ethos of publishing work that blurs genre and plays with form, experiments with compression or expansion, uses language in surprising ways, and brings attention to subject matter of contemporary urgency or uncommon interest. We especially love work that is tender, weird, and wild, hard-hitting and incisive, clear-sighted and daring. Stun us, wound us, share your gifts, or keep us warm—send us work that is unapologetically yours.

Please send one short story of up to 5,000 words or up to four related flash fiction pieces within the same total word limit.

This Editors' Choice prize for a single poem is open to any poet writing in English. The contest awards $250 to the first-place winner, $100 to the second-place winner, and $50 to the third-place winner and includes publication in the summer 2026 issue of Birdcoat Quarterly. 

All submission will be read anonymously by our team of editors and a first-place, second-place, and third-place essay will be chosen for prize and publication. Only previously unpublished work will be considered. You may submit up to three (3) poems per $12 entry fee. 

We only accept submissions via Submittable. Please take care that you are submitting under the contest category as regular submissions received during the contest period WILL NOT be entered into the contest. The deadline for contest submissions is December 1, 2025 at 11:59 PM EST. 

Each entry must include: 1) an entry fee of ten dollars ($12) and 2) the submitter's contact info (do NOT include any identifying information on the manuscript itself).

Simultaneous submissions will be considered with notification. All rights revert to author after publication.

We welcome submissions of creative nonfiction with a focus on lyric essays. While the definition of what makes a lyric essay is expansive and ever-evolving, our editors gravitate towards work that experiments with form and language, complicates our understanding of a topic, challenges our sense of certainty, or eschews truth in favor of the unknown, and takes us somewhere new. We are not particularly interested in essays that simply inform or document, but ones that bring to us to the threshold (of what? Anything) and incite conversations. We're looking for your essays that meander through time, challenge expectations, introduce nuance, humor, and paradox. We want work that lingers, elides, and leaves things unsaid. All is fair play for the lyric essay.

Please send one essay of up to 5,000 words or up to four related short essays within the same total word limit.