Hello poets and poetry lovers!

As stated in our last newsletter, we received 142 manuscript during the January 2025 open submission period. We narrowed it down to 8 manuscripts. Then, after taking a short break to clear our brain and also take care of a few other poetry things (like promotion for Underwater by Jill Michelle and Her Dark Everything by Courtney LeBlanc, our two forthcoming titles), we dove back into the manuscripts.

We’ll be honest — it was hard. Really hard. Each of these manuscripts is beautiful. Each of them deserves, and undoubtedly will get, publication. But we are a small press run by one woman, with a limited budget. So we read and reread. We highlighted and jotted notes and flipped back and forth. We hemmed and hawed but finally made a decision. Here are the four manuscripts we’re adding to the RIYT 2025/2026 lineup. We are so wildly grateful these poets have joined us and we absolutely cannot wait to share these books with you.

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We’re also gearing up for AWP, the annual writing conference, held in Los Angeles later this month. As usual, it will be a very busy time for us but we’re looking forward to it! You can find us at the book fair, table T923. Here’s the schedule for when RIYT poets will be signing books at our table at the book fair:

We also have an offsite reading on Thursday, 27 March at 7pm. We’ve partnered up with Small Harbor Publishing again this year and are very excited for the reading. We hope you can join us!

If you aren’t attending AWP this year you can still shop our books anytime. You may also want to join StayWP, a completely free, virtual conference held 28-30 March via Zoom organized by Justin Hamm.

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Prompt!

This newsletter’s prompt comes from Borrowing Your Body by Laura Passin - this was her debut collection, we’re very excited we’ll be publishing her second collection later this year!

Order Laura’s debut collection, Borrowing Your Body, and then mark your calendar for her forthcoming collection, We the Destroyers!

Stay strong and safe and we hope to see you at AWP later this month!

Peace & Poetry,

Courtney LeBlanc

Founder & Editor-in-Chief of Riot in Your Throat