ANNUAL DEADLINE for TPSR submissions & advertising space is 01 NOVEMBER
Click here for info about 2025’s The Polk Street Review!
The Polk Street Review (TPSR) is a unique anthology and creative place-making project that publishes submissions from creatives across the globe. TPSR is published annually by Community Education Arts Press, a division of Community Education Arts (a 501c3 nonprofit Arts organization based in Noblesville, Indiana). For each annual edition, we create a new sub-page online (“pull down” the list under the tab for this page).
TPSR is a one-of-a-kind anthology dedicated to publishing prose, poetry, song lyrics, and artwork images with a global perspective. We welcome submissions from both professional and amateur creative artists. Our annual submissions deadline is November 01. Annual editions are published each February (for example, submissions sent in by 01 Nov 2023 are published in the Feb 2024 edition). The Polk Street Review project has received international status with submissions and followers from all over the world. Awards (ribbons or certificates) are given in three categories: Prose; Poetry/Song Lyrics, and Images, as well as Award of Merit (Best in Book) and Special Award(s).
The annual theme is an optional prompt for people whose work has been published in our past editions of TPSR. If you’ve haven’t been published in TPSR since the 2017 edition, we suggest you use the theme prompt.
Everything you need to know about in-book advertising and creative submissions to The Polk Street Review can be found below.
Submission Form:
01 November is the annual deadline for Submissions AND in-book Advertising Space buys and submissions of poetry, song lyrics, prose, recipes, and artwork images. Please read the following submissions & advertising guidelines.
The Polk Street Review is published as a 6×9 full-color paperback with standard page margins that allow a print area of approximately 4.5 x 6.5 inches. We print all images centered as wide/tall as possible, all prose is flush-left, and all poetry is centered, unless you requested we keep your original poetic formatting (ie, flush-left; indents, etc.). Our publication policy is to maintain authors’ voices as best we can with little editing:
- we may edit prose pieces for clarity, grammar, punctuation, and blank lines (blank lines for dramatic pause work well when reading aloud, but are not conducive to the print area in 6×9 books)
- long lines in poems, which may fit a standard 8×10 page width, may break in the print area in places not intended by the author
All that said, we strive to respect and honor your work in our publications.
- hi-res PNG or JPG images only
- Format Required for Image file names: YourName_ArtworkTitle.jpg (or .png)
- WORD doc/docx or Google docs only; do not send PDFs (except Submission Form).
- You may use ONE Word/Google doc for all written submissions; please use “page break” between EACH piece, and make sure each piece is titled with your name UNDER the title.
- Format Required for arts bio, prose, poetry, song lyric file names: YourName_Title.doc (or .docx)
- Format Required for text of prose, poetry, song lyrics:
- put “by Author Name” under titles,
- use Times New Roman 12pt, single-spaced, left-aligned (unless a poem has a visual shape).
- our default page alignment for poetry/song lyrics is CENTERED, so if you don’t want your poem/song lyric centered, please type “keep formatting” at the bottom of the poem
- If you would like to send in audio or visual recordings of songs along with your written lyrics document, please submit MP3 or MP4 files; format the files names YourName_SongTitle.mp3/mp4
- Do not use ALL CAPS for titles of poems, prose, or song lyrics.
- Do not underline titles of poems, prose, or song lyrics.
- All submissions must be your own original work; collaborations are welcome.
Oral Histories
1) Audio or video files of oral history are accepted. With submission, we strongly urge a Microsoft Word or Google doc English-language transcription to be included for the print publication.
2) Audio/video files will be uploaded online on our website on the year’s/edition page for which they are submitted, on our podcast channel, and (possibly) our YouTube channel with appropriate credit given to the person submitting (if audio-only, then we may include some accompanying “generic” imagery for videos).
3) If accompanying transcriptions are not submitted by the 01 November annual deadline, the oral history submission will be included in the print edition as a QR code linked to the online audio file.
To submit your creative work to any of our opportunities, please follow file formatting guidelines above. Download and SAVE our Submission Form (example saved file name: YourName_TPSR2025.pdf) and submit by 01 Nov using ANY of these 3 options:
• EMAIL Submission Form with your submission files & brief bio (3rd-person) to info@cearts.org. If your files make the email too large to send, use one of the two other options, please.
• use WeTransfer (free version) to send all files (submission form, Word docs, 3rd-person bio) to info@cearts.org
• SHARE ALL FILES in ONE Google Folder to infog@cearts.org (NOTE the”g” in “infog” part of theemail address for sharing Google Folders).
Pre-Orders of the book, Patron donations, and Advertising Space buys help us cover project costs.
Pre-order copies of the book via Square: purchase link is updated with each edition each year, so check the sub-pages listed in the pull-down menu under this page’s tab for the purchase link for each edition. The link is also always in each year’s Submission Form.
Patron donations can be made with PayPal and Square:
PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=EYUZBTW7297XQ
Square: https://cearts.square.site/#FUIXHl
We would love to thank YOU and/or share YOUR Ad in our book!
Download the TPSR Advertising & Patron Form and send it to info@cearts.org by 01 November.
You can pay for Ad Space buys securely here: https://cearts.square.site/product/advertising-in-tpsr/21?cs=true or use the PayPalMe link and enter your Ad Space purchase amount: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/my/profile
TPSR’s biggest supporter is Love’s Hangover Creations, who donates a portion of their monthly revenue to support our annual TPSR project! We hope you will consider matching their donations and shop with them! https://www.shoptiques.com/boutiques/lhocreations
Check out last year’s publication, the 2024 edition of The Polk Street Review, and see the list of Awards winners, here: 2024 The Polk Street Review.
Our older editions of The Polk Street Review are available here:
Purchase directly from our printer: https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/communityeducationartspress
Purchase on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=The+Polk+Street+Review
Hold your curser on the main tab for this page to see the list of pages for past editions of The Polk Street Review.
For more information about our publishing division, go to https://cearts.org/cearts-press/. Find out how we can help you publish YOUR book!
Check out all of CEArts‘ Creative Place-making podcast episodes and short videos on @theroundtable!
Community • Education • Arts, Inc. (CEArts) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) Arts organization based in Noblesville IN that has a global reach.