bramble press showcases the best memorable poetry we can find. We want poetry that lingers in readers’ hearts & minds. The press was founded in 2025; the bramble lit mag in 2024.

We read in July and December for our lit mag; we read in September for chapbooks and zines. Check out our Submissions page for details.

Kat Bodrie, Founder, Editor, & Publisher

Kat is a writer, editor, and creative in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Her poems have been published in numerous literary magazines and displayed across the state for Poetry in Plain Sight. She is co-author of Digging Deep: Writing for Self-Discovery, Healing, & Transformation (forthcoming) and Bone Orchard: Reflections on Life under Sentence of Death (second edition). Her favorite poets include Stephen Dobyns, Diana Goetsch, Richard Blanco, and Sharon Olds. She is a fan of erasure poems and Postcard Poetry Fest.

Kat is passionate about the injustices of the criminal-legal system; her poem “Injections,” which compares pet euthanasia to Death Row prisoner euthanasia, was a finalist in North Carolina Poetry Society’s 2022 Poet Laureate Contest. Her master’s in literature diploma has been admired by generations of cave crickets in her basement.

Since this is her first venture into being a publisher, she is using her own work to cut her teeth on formatting & printing zines and chapbooks. She does not want someone else to be the guinea pig!

George T. Wilkerson, Assistant Editor

George is an award-winning, self-taught poet, writer, and visual artist on Death Row in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is author of Interface and co-author of Digging Deep: Writing for Self-Discovery, Healing, & Transformation (forthcoming), Bone Orchard: Reflections on Life under Sentence of Death (second edition), Inside: Voices from Death Row, and Beneath Our Numbers. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Bayou Magazine, Prime Number Magazine, and elsewhere. He is editor of Compassion, a newsletter by and for Death Row prisoners in America. A four-time PEN award winner, George loves playing volleyball, listening to 90s hip-hop, and eating Fruity Pebbles.