Colrain Cold Read: July 19, 2026

A live, acquisitions-style cold read of your poetry manuscript.

About the Cold Read

Colrain Cold Read is an intimate, 5–8 poet one-day intensive built around an enactment of a real-time submission moment: a press editor reads your manuscript cold, in front of the small group, and thinks aloud—exactly as they would at their office desk. You’ll hear the real editorial questions (title/TOC, opening 5-10 pages, through-line, writing skill, structure, cohesiveness, style, etc), followed by concrete responses for all 5-6 manuscripts in the group as the editor responds to each, one by one. After the editor’s departure, a Colrain faculty member anchors interpretations and expectations so you leave with a realistic understanding of work to be done.

What You Get

Live cold read by a press poetry editor (no advance prep).
Feedback on structure, order, title/sectioning, level/consistency of writing.
Post-session discussion and submissions strategy with faculty.

Who It’s For

Poets with an in-progress full-length (≈48–70 pp) or chapbook-length (15-40 pp) manuscript seeking real-world editorial evaluation before submitting to presses/contests (or after, for more understanding of rejections!).

Agenda

July 19, 2026

At 10am EST we’ll meet on Zoom and briefly introduce ourselves and faculty will describe the methodology of the session. Session lasts ~6 hours (including a half hour for lunch). When the press editor/publisher departs, Colrain faculty member, who has been present throughout taking notes, re-visits and discusses the session as needed and provides strategies for future submission to presses.

Application

To apply, please send 3-4 poems and a brief bio to conferences@colrainpoetry.com

Conference Fee

Following successful application, the fee is $700.00. You will receive a Paypal link to register.

Preparation

You’ll need to prepare your manuscript as instructed in an email before the session.

Faculty

Carey Salerno

Carey Salerno is the executive director and executive editor of Alice James Books. She is the author of The Hungriest Stars (2025), Tributary (2021), Shelter (2009), and a co-editor of Lit From Inside: 40 Years of Poetry from Alice James Books (2013). Her poems, essays, and articles about her work as a publisher can be found in places like American Poetry Review, NPR, The New York Times, among others. She has poems forthcoming in North American Review and Alaska Quarterly Review, and since 2010 she’s served as a lecturer in poetry and publishing arts for the University of Maine at Farmington. In a starred review of Tributary, Publishers Weekly deemed Salerno’s work “bold, memorable, and capacious.” Salerno is co-editor of Lit from Inside: 40 Years of Poetry from Alice James Books. She is a frequent guest at residencies, and MFA and nontraditional writing programs. In 2021, she received the Golden Colophon Award for Independent Paradigm Publishing from CLMP, the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, for the leadership and contributions of Alice James Books. Her current editorial project is Light Me Down: The Collected Poems of Jean Valentine, forthcoming from Alice James Books in April 2024.

Joan Houlihan

Joan Houlihan is the author of six books of poetry, most recently It Isn’t a Ghost if it Lives in Your Chest (Four Way Books, 2021) winner of the Julia Ward Howe Award and a Notable Indie Award; and Shadow-feast (Four Way Books, 2018), named a Must-Read book by Massachusetts Center for the Book. Her other books are: The Us, also a Massachusetts Center for the Book Must-Read book and Ay, both from Tupelo Press; The Mending Worm, winner of the Green Rose Award from New Issues Press; and Hand-Held Executions: Poems & Essays. Her poems have appeared in a wide array of leading journals, including Poetry, Plume, Boston Review, Harvard Review and Ploughshares and have been anthologized in The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (University of Iowa Press) and The Book of Irish-American Poetry–Eighteenth Century to Present (University of Notre Dame Press) among others. She has taught at Clark University, Columbia University, Emerson College and Smith College and Lesley University’s Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program. Houlihan founded and directs the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference.