There’s an exciting submission sitting atop my submissions folder. Came in on Tuesday, little in terms of a covering note beyond the basics, three poems that assumed I was familiar with the experience they were describing. I did recognise the experience. And that’s the point. We’ve been open since January; we close Friday 13 March; and in this final week of submissions for our next multi-community anthology, I still get a buzz of excitement when this most assumed style of writing falls across my desk.

We’ve read bundles since January. Poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, plus some work that resists categorisation and is generally better for it. The breadth of writing we’ve consumed has been broader than Broadway; the quality, remarkably high. What separates the work that stops us in our tracks, from the work that doesn’t, isn’t craft, exactly (though craft matters). It’s the direction the writing faces.

The work we’ve turned down this round isn’t lacking. Much is careful, considered, well-intentioned, but then pauses to make sure an outsider is following, glances over its shoulder to check the reader is keeping up. That glance is a disqualifying tell; it means the writer has imagined a reader who needs the experience explained, and so has written towards them. We’re not that publisher. We’re the one that never offers that sort of direction.

We publish work that assumes its reader to be the insider. Poetry that doesn’t tone down or interpret its own language. Prose that doesn’t contextualise for the uninitiated. If that is the work you’ve been sitting on, please send it to us. Margin to Margin Books are a small press and we read everything.

The Anthology submission window closes Friday 13 March 2026.

📣 If you know a writer who should be submitting their creative writing to M2M Books, please point them in our direction. The poetry and prose we’re looking for doesn’t always find its way to us without a gentle nudge from someone who recognises it.