The Split/Lip Press Mission
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Split/Lip Press is dedicated to publishing boundary-breaking fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid books, lifting the transition boards that prevent fluidity and smashing those we cannot pry up. We love work that questions the concept of truth and work that reinterprets what we think we know. We prize experimentation (physical, emotional, metaphysical, meta-emotional); we welcome the unanswerable. We want to see the dark and the light side of the moon—or we want to see it obliterated. If your book is a wedge in a crack, Split/Lip Press is the hammer helping you split the wall apart.
Since 2014, SLP has been honored to publish innovative and culturally relevant books. We collaborate with our authors as much as possible to design books which reflect the complexity of their work, and we print on-demand to provide our authors with the highest possible royalties. Each year, Split/Lip Press runs separate submissions periods for flash fiction/short story manuscripts, novella/novels, nonfiction/hybrid collections, and chapbooks (alternating between nonfiction/hybrid and fiction).
Split/Lip Press is committed to supporting work that fights against oppression by lifting up underrepresented people and voices. This is part of our mission of publishing boundary-breaking prose. Many members of the SLP family, as individuals, have long been involved in decolonization and antiracist work, financially contributing to support resistance and relief for oppressed peoples, and always bearing witness and amplifying their voices. But given the devastation in Palestine, the ongoing genocide, and the complicity of many institutions in the US, our editorial team felt the need to clarify our press's stance on the devastation in Gaza and what we're doing to live out those beliefs.
We do not support the genocide in Palestine, and we're appalled at the US government's continued support of Israel's apartheid regime and terror campaign. We stand with the Palestinian people, and we want to do everything in our power to lift up their voices. We encourage all other institutions to make their views known, and we demand that our colleges, universities, and government programs divest from Israel. We stand firmly against both antisemitism and Zionism.
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The Split/Lip Press Team
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Kristine Langley Mahler
Director and Publisher
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Kristine Langley Mahler is the author of A Calendar Is a Snakeskin (Autofocus, 2023), Curing Season: Artifacts (West Virginia University Press, 2022) and Teen Queen Training (forthcoming with Autofocus, 2026). Her work has been supported by the Nebraska Arts Council, twice named Notable in Best American Essays, and published in DIAGRAM, Fourth Genre, Ninth Letter, American Literary Review, and Brevity, among others. Find more about her projects at kristinelangleymahler.com or @suburbanprairie.
Caleb Tankersley
Managing Director
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Caleb Tankersley’s story collection Sin Eaters won the Permafrost Book Prize and was published in 2022 by University of Alaska Press. He is also the author of the chapbook Jesus Works the Night Shift. His writing can be found in Carve, The Cimarron Review, Puerto del Sol, Sycamore Review, and other magazines. He lives and teaches in St. Paul.
Abigail Oswald
Marketing Director
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Abigail Oswald is a writer whose work predominantly examines themes of celebrity, crime, and girlhood. Her writing has appeared in Catapult, Wigleaf, DIAGRAM, Split Lip, Best Microfiction, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, lives in Connecticut, and can be found at the movie theater in at least one parallel universe at any given time. More online at abigailwashere.com.
Gage Saylor
Marketing Director
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Gage Saylor is a Ph.D. candidate at Oklahoma State University. His work has appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Passages North, Tampa Review, Nimrod, and elsewhere. He serves as a Guest Editor at The Masters Review and CRAFT. You can find him at gagesaylor.com and @gage__saylor on Twitter.
Athena Dixon
Nonfiction/Hybrid Editor
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Athena Dixon is the author of The Loneliness Files (Tin House, 2023), The Incredible Shrinking Woman (Split/Lip Press, 2020), and No God in This Room (Argus House Press, 2018). Her work also appears in The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books, 2018) and Getting to the Truth: The Craft and Practice of Creative Nonfiction (Hippocampus Books, 2021). Athena is a fellow of Callaloo and V.O.N.A. as well as a Tin House Winter Workshop attendee. Additionally, she has presented at AWP, HippoCamp, and The Muse and the Marketplace, among other panels and conferences across the nation. She has served as a Writer in Residence for the app Dipsea. Athena has been awarded a fellowship from The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and a 2nd book residency from Tin House.
Pedro Ramírez
Short Story/Flash Fiction Editor
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Pedro Ramirez is a Mexican-American writer from New York City. He's worked as an associate editor at december magazine, an assistant editor at Compose: A Journal of Simply Good Writing, and as an assistant and associate editor at Dogwood: a Journal of Poetry & Prose, Fairfield University's national literary journal.
Lauren W. Westerfield
Outgoing Nonfiction/Hybrid Editor
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Lauren W. Westerfield is the author of Depth Control, a hybrid essay/autofiction collection forthcoming from Unsolicited Press (Spring 2025). Her essays and poetry have most recently appeared in FENCE, Seneca Review, Willow Springs, Denver Quarterly, and OptWest. She teaches in the English department at Washington State University, where she is the Editing and Publishing Certificate coordinator and serves as the editor-in-chief of Blood Orange Review. Lauren is the recipient of a 2022 Fellowship in Literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts in support of her current book project, a memoir in essays exploring epigenetics, illness, artmaking, addiction, autonomy, sexuality, power, and shame.
David Wojciechowski
Book Designer
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David Wojciechowski is the author of Dreams I Never Told You & Letters I Never Sent (Gold Wake Press). His poems have appeared in Bateau, Bodega, HAD, Hobart, Meridian, and elsewhere. He also has a few collaborative poems in the anthology They Said (Black Lawrence Press). David is a freelance designer and editor, and he teaches writing and literature at several colleges. David can be found online at davidwojo.com and on Twitter @MrWojoRising.
Split/Lip Press Reading Teams
2024 Nonfiction/Hybrid Reading Team
Ciara Alfaro
Cavar
August Owens Grimm
Zee Khadijah Karim
Tucker Lieberman
E. Ce Miller
Keene Short
Maxwell Suzuki
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2024 Short Story/Flash Fiction Reading Team
Elena Aponte
Hannah Berman
Robin Bissett
Coby-Dillon English
Victoria Hood
Amanda Krupman
Kaleena Madruga
Aysha Mahmood
Mrityunjay Mohan
eric morris
Mariya Poe
Reema Rao-Patel
Kim Weldin
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2024 Tenth Anniversary Open Prose
Chapbook Reading Team
Athena Dixon
Kate Finegan
Kristine Langley Mahler
Abigail Oswald
Pedro Ramírez
Gage Saylor
Caleb Tankersley
2024 Novel/Novella Reading Team
Lindsey Bannister
Rubén Degollado
Steven Genise
Sarah Harshbarger
Patrick Thomas Henry
Kameron Ray Morton
Gage Saylor
Mwinji Siame
Erin Vachon
Jonah Wu