Humans & Nature Press Books

The books branch of Humans & Nature Press is pleased to announce the 2026 call for proposals for single-author book manuscripts. For answers to frequently asked questions, click here. For submission guidelines, continue reading below.

Submission Window

Humans & Nature Press is open for direct submissions from authors for a two-month period, beginning June 1, 2026 at 9am Pacific and closing August 3, 2026 at 11:59pm Pacific. Submissions may be made here.

Mission and Values: Are We a Fit for Your Work?

The Center for Humans & Nature is home to a press and a farm that explore in-depth and diverse perspectives about what it means to be human in an interconnected world. The books branch of Humans & Nature Press is a newly fledged press, with three anthology series under our own imprint: the award-winning Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations, the Elementals series, and Sensoria: Attending to the Wonder and Vitality of Nature (forthcoming 2026). We are also currently supporting three single-author manuscripts, the first of which, A Stone Made of Circle: An Island Waybook, is scheduled for release in fall 2026.

Other books authored or edited by the Center’s staff or published with press partners can be found here. These books, together with essays, art, and poetry available through the Center’s digital publishing here, provide the foundation for  the Center’s publishing.

At Humans & Nature Press, in addition to continuing our digital publications and our internally curated edited book volumes, we are now supporting creative and visionary single-author works by disciplinary boundary crossers, creative storytellers, and innovative ecological thinkers.

The Center’s publication platforms amplify the work of those who illuminate how principles of reciprocity, care, and justice apply to the whole community of life. We share stories and ideas from philosophers, poets, authors, academics, artists, and activists who are committed to multidisciplinary and multicultural approaches to knowing the world. The Center exists to provide a hub for these approaches to benefit collectively those working toward a socially just and an ecologically flourishing future.

Becoming familiar with these previously published works is recommended. They offer examples of the kinds of topics and the types of writing we support, and may be essential to prospective authors. If you are considering submitting a manuscript proposal, please also familiarize yourself with the Center’s mission and values, which are inspired by exploring and promoting “human responsibilities in relation to nature—the whole community of life.”

Types of Manuscripts We Are Currently Seeking

We are looking for manuscripts that are socially relevant, emotionally compelling, creatively written, and critically discerning, which feature vivid storytelling and engage the empathic imaginations of readers. Manuscript proposals that receive consideration would typically be categorized as creative nonfiction. Good examples of this genre type with a focus on the natural world, scientific and traditional knowledges, and aspects of environmental philosophy, humanities, and ethics can be found through our digital publications and in magazines such as Orion, Emergence, and Terrain.org.

We are actively looking for work that demonstrates the scope and ambitions of Humans & Nature Press publications—compelling writing that explores ideas and ideals (practice, connection, cosmology, ethics) and on-the-ground community and culture (historical, social, political). We want masterful storytelling and creative, bold choices that we would not see from a standard academic press. We want depth and expertise, even if it is not foregrounded in the text. We want to feel place, not just read about it. We want work that reaches beyond an assumed middle class, white, American audience. We are not seeking writing that would be classified as self-help, or enlightened gurus who proffer ten easy steps to ecological salvation; we want writing that lives with and within the tangled relations we share.

We offer a unique space as a publisher, supporting work that holistically engages social and natural systems—land as a community to which we belong—while honoring and attending to more-than-human lifeworlds. We embrace the experimental and the experiential, and we seek manuscripts that integrate creativity and intellectual rigor through storytelling that invites readers into thinking that is also doing.

We are not currently accepting fiction or poetry—though, as the press develops, we may do so in our next call for book submissions. For other common questions, see our FAQs.

Is Your Manuscript Proposal Ready?

Humans & Nature Press will consider both an overall book proposal accompanied by three to four sample chapters; or a proposal accompanied by a completed manuscript. Editorial review will be done in both cases by members of our editorial staff and board, and by particular outside experts, if the nature of the manuscript requires that. As we invite a broad range of subject matter and writing styles, in keeping with the Center’s mission and goals, so too we will provide a review process that gives authors every opportunity to tell us the story of why this book needs to be written and should be published. Please review the proposal submission guidelines below before submitting your proposal to us.

Selection Process

Submitting

We use Submittable to track the submissions we receive and keep these materials in one place. When you are ready to submit, please click here and follow the instructions.

We are unable to review unsolicited manuscripts that come to us outside of the submission window.

We appreciate your interest in Humans & Nature Press.

In kinship and gratitude,

Gavin Van Horn, Executive Editor, Books
Bruce Jennings, Developmental Editor, Books

Proposal Submission Guidelines

Please submit your Proposal as a Word file, with one-inch margins, double-spaced text, using 12-point Times New Roman font. Number the pages of your proposal and chapters in the upper right-hand corner of the header.

1. Pitch / Synopsis / Why this book? Why now?
   Start with a brief description of your book (1 page or less), including its proposed title. This is your overview of the work and its main argument. Show us what makes your work distinctive, groundbreaking, revelatory, necessary, or field-changing. The style of your prose should match the style you envision for the manuscript itself.

2. Annotated Table of Contents
   Include an annotated table of contents with brief descriptions of each chapter. In an introductory statement, mention the reason for the sequence of the chapters you have chosen and how they interact and flow together. Show us how the argument builds and what the manuscript does overall. It’s been said that a great table of contents reads like poetry, which we think is a valuable way of thinking about a table of contents.

3. Sample Chapters
   This is your chance to demonstrate that you can successfully execute what you are proposing. Include three to four complete, well-written and well-researched chapters that will leave us hungry to read more. As noted above, if you have a completed draft of the whole book, you can submit that with your proposal.

4. Author Biosketch (Qualifications)
   Provide a brief (1 page or less) biographical sketch. Where does this story and your interest in the general topic of your book come from? What makes you the best person to write this story, and what can you bring to it that other authors might not? Are you engaged in public speaking, writing, or other public-facing projects, and are these local, national, or global in scope? In addition to this narrative biosketch, space will also be offered for you to enclose a resumé or a CV when you submit your proposal.

5. Competitive and Complimentary Analysis
   We’d like to know which books you hope your book will travel with, either in a complementary or competitive manner. This will include a discussion of what existing books you see as comparable, especially those published within the last few years. If you’re writing something that is more scholarly in content, discuss other scholarly books; if you are writing for a general audience, focus on trade books.

6. Audience/Marketing Plan
   Give us your sense of which audiences will be most excited by your work and why. We encourage you to be realistic. Some books can indeed attract a broad range of readers, but most work is targeted toward particular fields and practitioners. Your marketing plan is one of the most essential components of your proposal. Make it concrete and realistic, and include as many concrete numbers as you can.

7. Projected Length
   Please include the expected length (in words, not pages) of the text, notes, and bibliography, if you plan to include one; the projected number of illustrations; and—if you don’t already have a complete manuscript—when you anticipate a full draft will be completed.

There is no required length for a proposal, but they typically fall in the range of 10–30 double-spaced pages. For more specific guidance on crafting a proposal, we recommend:

• Chapter 5 of William Germano’s Getting It Published
• The 8 Essential Elements of a Nonfiction Book Proposal by Brian A. Klems in Writers Digest
• The Poets & Writers Guide to the Book Deal

For answers to frequently asked questions, click here.