Award-winning independent publisher of poetry, short fiction, and essay. 

Sarabande Books is an award-winning, internationally-distributed, nonprofit, independent literary publishing house founded in 1994 in Louisville, Kentucky. 

With nearly three hundred titles in print, we have earned a dedicated readership and a national reputation as a publisher of diverse forms and innovative voices. Through our free arts programming, we are proud to invest in emerging writers and serve as an educational resource locally and nationally. 

Sarabande authors are Nobel laureates, Pulitzer winners, Guggenheim recipients, and winners of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and many other awards, honors, and distinctions. 

Our Mission

Sarabande Books champions innovative voices in poetry, short fiction, essay, and literature in translation. We’re create lasting editions that honor exceptional writing.

Sarabande Books

The Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction

The Sarabande Prize in the Essay

The Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry

The Sarabande Open: Open to All

Each year during the month of July, Sarabande offers writers and translators the opportunity to get their manuscripts in front of our editors without the mediating factors of agents or judges. Providing direct access to writers is a core Sarabande value, rooted in our long-held belief that you, writers, know best what kind of work we're going to love. 

We can’t wait to read your full-length manuscripts of poetry, fiction, hybrid work, literary nonfiction, and literature in translation! 

The Sarabande Open—Poetry

The Sarabande Open—Fiction

The Sarabande Open—Nonfiction

Manuscript must be at least 14 pages of prose or poetry, excluding title page and optional table of contents

Sarabande Books

Highlights

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Featured Call

The Sarabande Chapbook Prize (Fall)