About
Boxcar Chapbooks is an independent Canadian chapbook publisher that was started by Neil Aitken in 2022. We seek to publish handmade chapbooks of poetry, flash fiction, and micro lyric essays written by emerging and established writers. As a BIPOC-helmed queer-friendly press, we are especially interested in work that explores border spaces, intersections, and transformations – and looks for unexpected connections and moments of wonder.
Mission
Our goal is to create books that are both beautiful to view and read. We publish limited hand-numbered runs of each chapbook (usually no more than 150). Authors will receive 20 copies if their manuscript is selected for publication.
We are looking for manuscripts that have been assembled thoughtfully as an arc or progression with some narrative thread, governing image, or thematic line holding them together.
Masthead
Neil Aitken (Editor) is the author of two books of poetry, Babbage’s Dream (Sundress Publications, 2017) and The Lost Country of Sight (Anhinga Press, 2008), winner of the Philip Levine Prize. He is also the founding editor of Boxcar Poetry Review (2006-2021), co-director of De-Canon; and curator of Have Book Will Travel. A past Kundiman poetry fellow, he holds both an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from USC. For more information about his writing, his services as a coach and manuscript editor, or his collaborations with contemporary composers, visit his website at www.neil-aitken.com.