HEART Poetry Award
Deadline: June 30, 2025
Nostalgia Press, going strong since 1986, will award $500 and publication in HEART 20 (Fall/Winter 2025). Honorable Mentions also published. Winners going back to our first contest in 1988 are recognized on our website.
This year's judge is Grey Held. Born in Richmond, Virginia, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a BS in Architecture and Design, then moved to Philadelphia for an MFA at the Tyler School of Art (Temple University). Grey is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing and is the 2019 Future Cycle Poetry Book Prize Winner. Three books of his poetry have been published, Two-Star General (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2012), Spilled Milk (Word Press, 2013), and WORKaDAY (FutureCycle Press, 2019). Grey is also a literary activist who has received four Massachusetts Cultural Council LCC grants for public projects that connect contemporary poets with wider audiences. His most recent project is MakePoetryConcrete, which has stamped dozens of poems into the fresh concrete of sidewalks throughout village centers in Newton, Massachusetts. Grey now teaches a weekly Zoom-based poetry workshop (PoetryRoundTable).
- $10 entry fee covers 3 poems
- All contestants will receive a digital copy of the Fall/Winter 2025 issue of HEART
- Submit prose poems and modern free verse that are insightful, immersing, poignant, and reflective
- Submit unpublished work only
- On each page, please include your name, address, phone number, and email address (this information will be hidden so your work can be judged blind)
- Winners will be announced on the Nostalgia Press website
- Submissions will not be returned
Submit online or mail your entry to:
Nostalgia Press
Attn: HEART Poetry Award
115 Randazzo Drive
Elloree, SC 29047
