Metatron Press

"Wavering Futures is alive with precise physicality. Whether Shen is writing about a scene that doesn’t go as planned, piercing hooks into a sub’s chest, surfing the web in the 90s as its own physical space, or about the mosh pits of the past as somewhere “to create our own inverted worlds,” her writing engages the reader with visceral images and multiple pleasures. Impressive in its hybridity and multiplicity, Shen’s Wavering Futures reminds us we can create our own inverted worlds, ones we have agency in creating, ones where we can bask in pleasure, rather than the doomsday dystopian world we live in." - Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, author of knot body and The Good Arabs and winner of the Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal 2022

"Ecstatic? Nightmarish! Earnest? Scholarly! From the mosh pit to the bacchanal, the riverbank to the dungeon, Kawai Shen plots a rollercoaster course through apocalypse that all comes back to our middles. Climb on and let yourself hang upside down in Shen's vision, all her own." - Lee Suksi, author of The Nerves and Acting On You and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Erotica, 2021

More blurbs ✨

"Instead of lines of social propriety, I redrew my world according to baselines, coke lines, visible panty lines. I redefined my lifelines."

Cover of Wavering Futures by Xiaoxiao Li, intense watercolours from fiery orange to deep sea blue bleed into each other.

"Kawai Shen is my favorite agitator of revolutionary desire. Earnest in her angst and yearning, and alive to the possibilities that disorder and pain can open, her collection approaches big subjects from strikingly intimate angles, with vignettes as strangely satisfying as picking at a scab. Moving from teenage summer scenes, sparing yet sumptuous in their autoeroticism, to a meditation on the mosh pit social-politic, to bondage play and epistolary romance unfolding in a speculative fascist dystopia, Shen pursues her obsessions with such care and sureness I am a willing submissive, ready to follow wherever she goes." - Whitney Mallett, Founding editor of The Whitney Review of New Writing and co-editor of Barbie Dreamhouse: An Architectural Survey

Pre-orders for Wavering Futures, my debut book with @metatronpress.bsky.social, are open now🔥 metatron.press/shop/waverin...

Metatron Press is ecstatic to announce Wavering Futures by Kawai Shen @kawaishen.bsky.social

A shape-shifting debut of fiction + essays on intimacy, collapse + desire—Wavering Futures imagines new ways of relating + resisting inside a trembling present.

Pre-Order → metatron.press/shop/waverin...

𝔓𝔯𝔢-𝔒𝔯𝔡𝔢𝔯 ✻ all the time

Blending autotheory, fragmented lyric, and the delicate architecture of silence, Huang asks:

ɪꜰ ʟᴀɴɢᴜᴀɢᴇ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴀʀʀɪᴠᴇꜱ ᴇxᴀᴄᴛʟʏ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ᴡᴇ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ɪᴛ ᴛᴏ, ᴅᴏ ᴡᴇ ꜱᴛɪʟʟ ᴅᴀʀᴇ ᴛᴏ ꜱᴘᴇᴀᴋ?

metatron.press/shop/all-the...

𝔓𝔯𝔢-𝔒𝔯𝔡𝔢𝔯 ✻ all the time

Metatron Press is thrilled to open pre-orders for 𝔞𝔩𝔩 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔱𝔦𝔪𝔢: poems & traces, the newest collection from Shanghainese-Canadian poet and scholar Xiaoxuan Huang.

metatron.press/shop/all-the...

Metatron Press is ✨ecstatic✨ to announce our first title of 2026!

✻ 𝔞𝔩𝔩 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔱𝔦𝔪𝔢: poems & traces ✻
by Xiaoxuan Huang

ꜱᴏᴍᴇ ᴡᴀʏꜱ ᴏꜰ ʟɪꜱᴛᴇɴɪɴɢ
ᴛᴜʀɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡʜᴏʟᴇ ʙᴏᴅʏ
ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴀɴ ᴇᴀʀ

metatron.press/shop/all-the...

Part 1: Origins of a Dream open.substack.com/pub/ashleyob...
Part 2: Class, Capitalist, and the Cost of a Dream open.substack.com/pub/ashleyob...
Part 3: The Inheritance of Stability and the Architecture of Exclusion open.substack.com/pub/ashleyob...

Our founder and managing editor is writing a series of essays on the state of indie publishing in Canada that we recommend reading. Tea ☕️

You can find parts 1-3 below:

Announcing the Winner of the 7th International Metatron Poetry Prize Prairie-based Peace Akintade-Oluwagbeye wins the Prize with 'The Goat’s Tongue'

✶❂✷ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝟕𝐓𝐇 𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐍 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐎𝐄𝐓𝐑𝐘 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐙𝐄 ✷❂✶

✦ 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑮𝒐𝒂𝒕’𝒔 𝑻𝒐𝒏𝒈𝒖𝒆 ✦
𝐛𝐲 𝐏𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐀𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐝𝐞-𝐎𝐥𝐮𝐰𝐚𝐠𝐛𝐞𝐲𝐞
❀ A seismic new voice in poetry — raw, mythic, and electrifying.

↠ Read the full announcement ✶
metatron.press/news/metatro...

We’re thrilled to announce our third of four forthcoming 2026 titles:
LATERAL SWAY by Hannah Karpinski.

A poetic archive of queer youth, diasporic longing + soft resistance—told through footnotes, fragments + the ache of what goes unsaid.

It's official! My first book shall be released with one of my fave indie presses <333

We’re thrilled to announce our second of four forthcoming 2026 titles:
✨ Wavering Futures by Kawai Shen @kawaishen.bsky.social

A glitching love letter to a collapsing world—tracing climate crisis, fascism + desire through fragments of care, intimacy, resistance + radical imagination.

May 16, 2026

We’re thrilled to announce our first of four forthcoming 2026 titles:
✨ all the time by Xiaoxuan Huang @xiaoxuanhuang.bsky.social

A poetics of queer longing and silence as punctuation. Fragmented love letters. Philosophical breathwork. The emotional geometry of not-quite-saying.

April 17, 2026

Digital Publications

✶ We’re now accepting submissions for our new Digital Publications series! ✶

Open to international writers.

🔗 metatron.press/submissions
#DigitalLit #OpenCall

metatron.press/submit/digit...

The International Metatron Poetry Prize Finalists ❋ THE AREOLA DIARIES ❋ Stevie Belchak outside the land winds and there are oceans swelling into birds and someone somewhere is seeing today as today and today I am writing this

THE AREOLA DIARIES — Stevie Belchak
🔗 metatron.press/omega/stevie...
#MetatronPrize
@steviebelchak.bsky.social

The International Metatron Poetry Prize Finalists ❋ PLUM ❋ Em Frank I sat with a mirror and kept changing the distance of my face my pain was wider than time the air doted on me

PLUM — Em Frank
🔗 metatron.press/omega/em-fra...
#MetatronPrize

The International Metatron Poetry Prize Finalists ❋ THE GOAT’S TONGUE ❋ Peace Akintade-Oluwagbeye we wonder if the poet misses the real sky, the one that swallows you whole, that sheds its skin at dusk and drinks the wails of gods

THE GOAT’S TONGUE — Peace Akintade-Oluwagbeye
🔗 metatron.press/omega/peace-...
#MetatronPrize

The International Metatron Poetry Prize Finalists ❋ REFLECTIONS OF LIGHT ON WATER ❋ Tatum Howey Muteness, that was the word that lodged itself in me that morning. The feeling or general disposition I had been trying to locate.

REFLECTIONS OF LIGHT ON WATER — Tatum Howey
🔗 metatron.press/omega/tatum-...
#MetatronPrize

The International Metatron Poetry Prize Finalists ❋ FOOL’S ERRAND ❋ Casper Lucia I want something from you I can’t get because what I want from you is me

FOOL’S ERRAND — Casper Lucia
🔗 metatron.press/omega/casper...
#MetatronPrize

The International Metatron Poetry Prize Finalists ❋ THINKING IN PUBLIC ❋ Molly Schaeffer When I think of the possibility of dissolving I don’t have a problem with the action. The problem arises when I begin thinking about the residue that I might leave behind

THINKING IN PUBLIC — Molly Schaeffer
🔗 metatron.press/omega/molly-...
#MetatronPrize

The International Metatron Poetry Prize Finalists ❋ DON’T ASK DO TELL ❋ Noah Sparrow The colour I breathe in has turned purple. This is because in a day or two, I have already washed our towels, and you will get groceries, and you’ll go to the market, down the river

DON’T ASK DO TELL — Noah Sparrow
🔗 metatron.press/omega/noah-s...
#MetatronPrize

The International Metatron Poetry Prize Finalists ❋ THE AREOLA DIARIES ❋ Stevie Belchak outside the land winds and there are oceans swelling into birds and someone somewhere is seeing today as today and today I am writing this

FULL BLEED — Stevie Belchak
🔗 metatron.press/omega/stevie...
#MetatronPrize
@steviebelchak.bsky.social

We’re nearing the end of this year’s Metatron Prize feature.

Each of these eight books carries a voice we didn’t want to rush past.

This series is about making space—slow space—for new work that deserves real attention.

Find links to each of our features below 👇🏼✨

🔗 metatron.press/omega-catego...

We are accepting full-length manuscript submissions from Canadian citizens and residents until March 31 ✨

metatron.press/submit/manus...

We are simply stoked to announce ‘The Finalists’ for the seventh edition of The International Metatron Poetry Prize!

Of these 8 manuscripts, only one will be crowned the winner and have their debut published with us in 2026 🏆

Today we are thrilled to present Nueva ÖMËGÄ, a soft relaunch of our original blog, to share Shams Hanieh’s poem ‘Bankside Anxiety.’

Shams is a Palestinian-Algerian writer and researcher.

metatron.press/omega/banksi...

😍💕 So generous! Thank-you 🙏🏼

As someone who has read Gion’s manuscript I’m really pulling for his collection. Compelling, beautiful & poignant. Also pulling for friend of Milkhouse Reading Series Juliet Gelfman-Randazoo! 💘 can’t wait to read the new crop of Metatron selections, no matter who it is - v forward-thinking press!!

We are pleased to announce ‘The Longlist’ for the seventh edition of The International Metatron Poetry Prize! 🏆

Of these 22 manuscripts, 8 will advance to our Shortlist and be read by guest judge Precious Okoyomon 🪽 Who will take home the grand prize and be published with us in 2026?!