Sunflower Tanka is a new journal of contemporary tanka, tanka prose & experimental tanka forms. Founded in 2025 by Robbie Cheadle & Colleen Chesebro. Sunflower Tanka is published via Amazon.com once a year, in early December.

Submissions open in late summer and will be announced via this blog and on TankaTuesday.com.

Meet the Co-Editors

Award-winning, bestselling author, Robbie Cheadle, has published sixteen children’s books and three poetry books. Her work also features in several poetry and short story anthologies.

Robbie also has two novels published under the name of Roberta Eaton Cheadle and has horror, paranormal, and fantasy short stories featured in various anthologies under this name.

The eleven Sir Chocolate children’s picture books, co-authored by Robbie and Michael Cheadle, are written in sweet, short rhymes which are easy for young children to follow and are illustrated with pictures of delicious cakes and cake decorations. Each book also includes simple recipes or biscuit art directions which children can make under adult supervision.

Robbie and Michael Cheadle have recently launched a new series of children’s books called Southern African Safari Adventures. The first book, Neema the Misfit Giraffe is now available from Amazon.

You can find Robbie Cheadle’s poetry, artwork, fondant and cake artwork, and all her books on her website here: https://www.robbiecheadle.co.za/. She is also a poetry challenge host on TankaTuesday.com.

Robbie also creates the artwork for the Sunflower Tanka Anthology book covers.

Colleen M. Chesebro grew up in a large city in the Midwest. Keen on making her own way in the world, she joined the United States Air Force after graduation to tour the world and find herself. To this day, that search continues.

Besides poetry books, Chesebro’s publishing career includes participation in various anthologies featuring short stories, flash fiction, and poetry.

In 2016, Colleen created Tanka Tuesday as a platform for poets to learn the fundamentals of Japanese and American syllabic poetry. Each week, the community comes together for #TankaTuesday, to write syllabic poetry each week. Consider Word Craft: Prose & Poetry as the first step on your journey to learning the basics of how to craft syllabic poetry.

Chesebro lives in the house of her dreams in mid-Michigan, surrounded by the Great Lakes, with her husband and two (unicorn) cats, Chloe & Sophie. Most days, you can find her writing poetry or helping authors create their books for publication on https://tankatuesday.com.

If you’d like to learn how the basics of crafting syllabic poetry, join in our weekly challenges on tankatuesday.com.