innovative. daring. beautiful.
Rockwood Press makes right-sized poetry chapbooks for people who need poems.
We believe chapbooks are an art form as much as a literary form, perfectly suited for revolution, protest, political change, and social critique. They can be both haunting and hauntingly beautiful.
We believe in emerging and established poets and aim to make room for all kinds of mighty voices in teeny books that might not otherwise find their way into the world.
We believe that a work doesn’t have to be full-length to have a full life. That’s why almost all of our releases are open editions.
Forsythia Overnight is a poetic journey filled with glimpses of the Ozarks and shadows of the Osage. Diamonds and gold, the oak and the pine, a garage and a yard thirsty for blessings; all places and pieces woven to relay messages from the past, echoes of Dave Malone’s people and his hills. These poems ask the questions we all carry: the whys of nature, who we are, and how the past continues to shape us.
—Carol Parris Krauss, author of Mountain. Memory. Marsh.
I devoured Dave Malone’s poems, savoring the way he hovers over a moment until it opens—a longing, an appreciation for our humanness. I closed the book both “lost and found,” already wanting to start again.
—Jennifer J. Camp, author of The Uncovering
Here we find a spring-to-fall cycle, from the sudden surprise of early blooms to the loss of dear trees. A parallel arc traces movement from the fragile satisfactions of home to the risky exposures of the open road. Threading both is the poet’s sensitive response to the terms of organic life, including his own in his beloved Ozarks.
—James Fowler, author of Postcards from Home
Dave Malone is a poet and screenwriter from the Missouri Ozarks. He holds degrees from Ottawa University and Indiana State University. A Best of the Net and three-time Pushcart nominee, he is the author of eight poetry collections. His poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Midwest Review, and Fourteen Hills. His latest film project is the short, Tennyson’s Maud. He occasionally reads poems on TikTok: @poetmalone.
Details
Title: Forsythia Overnight
Author: Dave Malone
Publisher: Rockwood Press
Released: 2026 - September
Format: chapbook, acid-free paper, silk cover
Pages: 62
Price: $10
ISBN: 978-1-59498-245-3
forsythia overnight
forsythia overnight
Recent titles
We Are All Naked in This Land by David J. Kann, coming September 29!
We Are the Borders by Abdullah Bin Imran, coming September 20!
Forsythia Overnight by Dave Malone
Annunciations by Buffy Shutt
Apocalypse Rainbow by Louisa Schnaithmann
nor are you free to abandon it by sarah klein
Letters to the Dead by Toni Ortner
Black by the Bedside by Khadija Ceesay
Tiger Bite by Ursula McCabe
Cumulus by Shivani Gupta
minutes between city and forest by Ceridwen Hall
AMERICANAPOCALYPSE by tommy wyatt blake
This Rough Magic by John A. deSouza
View all our available chapbooks
submissions
We select manuscripts through an open submissions process that occurs year-round.
Manuscripts should be tightly linked collections of ten to thirty poems or up to forty pages, submitted in .rtf, .doc, or .docx formats only. All submissions should be made via email. We do not accept unsolicited paper submissions.
Eligibility: Poets writing in English are eligible. Previous book publication is not a consideration. Simultaneous submissions are permissible, but entrants are asked to notify Rockwood Press immediately if a manuscript becomes committed elsewhere.
There is no open submission fee.
We do our best to reply to submissions within one month, but the time can vary depending on submission volume. If your work has not been accepted or declined, it’s still under consideration. Every submission is considered thoroughly before a response is made.
All submissions are eligible for publication by Rockwood Press with a standard royalty contract.
submissions at Rockwood Press dot com
If we seem familiar
That’s because, Rockwood Press, a not-for-profit literary imprint, is a project of Fernwood Press and its parent company, Barclay Press. For years, we’ve made our books and full-length poetry collections available through POD services, but we wanted to produce more books in-house where we have control over color, texture, paper quality, and the overall shape each project takes.
We’ve also seen a ten-fold increase in poetry submissions over the last year and sensed from our conversations with writers that it’s getting harder and harder to find homes for good work.
The project of Rockwood Press is to bring more great poetry into the world in smaller, focused collections that can be produced locally, quickly, and beautifully.
