Wising Up Press [1]
We want authentic voices and well-crafted work that makes us think, opens our hearts and is about something. Please read our guidelines and subject categories carefully. Look at our publishing philosophy and some of our publications to see if our approach to writing and publishing echoes with yours. Use the questions in the personal statement to help you think through whether this feels like a good match. Our writers engage collaboratively with the press for two years and that needs to feel like an engaging opportunity and not an obligation. Query us if uncertain. We respond to formal submissions within two months, in a way that writers have something to grow on. Please be as considerate of our time. Note that when you submit we ask for a commitment to publish with us if we accept.
Wising Up Press is a press with a clear social mission, fostering an appreciation of the rewards and challenges of pluralism at every level in society, and, most importantly, an interest in the role that art, particularly story, can play in making inclusion easier for everyone. The editors call their approach “Finding the We in Them, the Us in You.” They are also a press with professional skills in writing, editing, and publishing, and they exercise a strong curatorial function in the work they choose—they want to publish books readers return to for years.