Horse Less Press

As of 2016, I’ve been editing Horse Less for 12 years. When I started it, I really loved the opportunity it gave me to contribute to my poetry community and also have this really visible, definite role in it. I felt that there were exciting writers who were not getting published, and I felt like I could do something about that problem.

For the past several years, I’ve been feeling pretty burnt out. Part of it is scheduling – I am overcommitted, and doing my own writing and taking care of myself are usually at the bottom of the list. I also have some ambivalence about what our goals are and should be now, as a press, and what role I really can or should have right now as an editor. I’ve tried several different changes in the way the press is run, in hopes of addressing that. Some really amazing and exciting things have happened as a result – most recently, we’ve added a fabulous list of new editors to our masthead, and I’m truly excited about what’s coming to our catalog in 2016. I feel especially awful, then, to switch gears at this particular point, but I’ve been thinking on it every day for some months now, and it feels really necessary.

Horse Less is going to take a publishing hiatus in 2017. Our 2016 catalog and forthcoming projects won’t be affected. All our 2016 books and chapbooks will happen as scheduled, and in 2017 I will continue to promote and keep available the titles in our catalog in the way I always have. But our online journal and book reviews section will be winding down later this year; additionally, horse less will not accept any new material (books, chapbooks, or online work) for publication in 2017, and we won’t be reading/considering any new material during 2017.

We are pre-hiatusing with a bang, as we have already published titles by Megan Burns, Christine Bettis, Daniela Olszewska, Cassandra de Alba, Jessica Comola, Phil Estes, and Kate Schapira this year, and we have an amazing list of books and chapbooks forthcoming still in 2016:

April: Exuviae by Lauren Brazeal
empathy for cars/force of july by Davy Knittle

June: Two Teenagers by John Colasacco
NERVS by Stephon Lawrence
Black & Blue Prints by Ahmunet Jessica Jordon

July/August: On Not Screaming by Eloisa Amezcua
Lands of Yield by Stephanie Anderson
Ic by Serena Chopra

September: Missing Slides by Stephen Danos

October: Girl Tramp by Cynthia Spencer
The Somnambulist by Lara Montes

November: Aluminum Necropolis by Nichole Riggs

December: Blank Blank Blues by Anna Gurton-Wachter
Linthead Stomp by Tim Earley

Thanks so much to our amazing writers and editors and to everyone who has supported and continues to support us.

Jen Tynes