Award-Winning Poetry and Prose 2019
Winter 2019-2020: Poetry
THE POEM IS WHERE I KILL MY DARLINGS
by Dujie Tahat
Winner of a 2019 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship
Postmark Deadline: December 23
The venerable Poetry Society of America gives four annual awards for chapbook manuscripts by authors with no published full-length poetry books. Tahat won one of the two awards for authors aged 30 and under. This lyrical poem mourns the memories and traits that immigrants suppress to fit into their new country.
THE GIRL IN THE BED
by Erica Bodwell
Winner of the 2018 Wilder Series Book Prize
Entries must be received by December 31
Two Sylvias Press sponsors this prize of $1,000 and publication for a full-length poetry manuscript by women over 50. Bodwell's Crown of Wild was the most recent winner. The title character of this tense prose poem "wants a witness" to an unspecified but pivotal experience that keeps her mind shuttling between past and present.
WHEN I WAS A MAN
by Justin Phillip Reed
Winner of an Honor Book Award for Best Poetry in the 2019 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Awards
Entries must be received by December 31
BCALA offers this prestigious free contest with $500 prizes for published books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by African-American authors that "offer outstanding depictions of the cultural, historical or sociopolitical aspects of the Black Diaspora." Reed's debut collection Indecency (Coffee House Press, 2018) was a runner-up. This complex poem voices the overweening pride of privileged masculinity while hinting at its tragic quality.
I, INC.
by Brandon Krieg
Winner of the 2019 Colorado Prize for Poetry
Entries must be received by January 14
This prestigious open poetry manuscript contest offers $2,000 and publication by the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University. Krieg's Magnifier was the most recent winner. This wide-ranging poem of nature and technology plays on multiple meanings of the word "incorporate", expressing the conflict between a vision of one's self as part of the biosphere and industrial exploitation of natural resources.
TESTIMONY OF AN ARMLESS MAN
by Dara Yen Elerath
Winner of the 2019 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry
Entries must be received by January 15
This competitive award from BkMk Press at the University of Missouri-Kansas City gives $1,000 and publication for a full-length poetry manuscript. Elerath's The Dark Braid was the most recent winner. In this quietly heartbreaking prose poem, the victim of a farming accident describes a strange new capacity for finding what is lost—and losing it again.
Summer 2019: Poetry
AULLO
by Antonio Lopez
Second Prize Winner of the 2018 Palette Poetry Emerging Poet Prize
Entries must be received by August 15
This contest from a sophisticated online literary journal gives prizes up to $3,000 for a poem by an author with fewer than two full-length collections published. Lopez's bilingual riff on Ginsberg's classic "Howl" expresses fierce pride in Hispanic immigrant culture, and denounces Texas legislation that banned sanctuary cities.
TWO SONGS FROM A CAR
by Ioanna Carlsen
Winner of the 2019 Off the Grid Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by August 31
This contest for poets aged 60+ awards $1,000 and publication for a full-length manuscript. Carlsen's Breather was the most recent winner. These brief poems open up the ordinary details of a winter scene into moments of deep self-confrontation.
INVESTIGATION and other poems
by Erin Malone
Winner of the 2018 Coniston Prize
Entries must be received by September 1
This contest from Radar Poetry, judged by prominent authors, gives $1,000 for a suite of 3-6 unpublished poems by a woman. Paired with artwork by Emily Chase, Coniston's enigmatic poems about a murdered boy use white space and scattered line breaks to suggest missing clues and inexplicable losses.
SOMETHING I LEARNED ABOUT AGAPE WHEN I WAS YOUNG
by Christina Pugh
Winner of the 2019 Juniper Prize for Poetry
Entries must be received by September 30
This long-running poetry manuscript contest from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst gives two prizes of $1,000 and publication, one for a first book and one for a subsequent book. Pugh's Stardust Media was the most recent winner of the latter prize. This philosophical prose-poem considers the aesthetic consequences of believing that attention, like compassion, is a limited resource.
CALENTURE
by Allison Hutchcraft
Editor's Choice in the 2019 New Issues Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by December 30
This competitive first-book series from Western Michigan University gives a top prize of $1,000 and publication by New Issues Press, and an Editor's Choice prize of publication. Hutchcraft's Swale was the most recent winner of the latter prize. Titled after a phenomenon in which sailors hallucinate a landscape on the ocean's surface, this poem imagines the joy of having one's deepest yearning satisfied, even if only for an illusory moment.
Spring 2019: Fiction and Nonfiction
FOUR HUNDRED RINGS
by Courtney Marcelo Norton
Third Prize Winner of Narrative Magazine's Fall 2018 Story Contest
Entries must be received by March 31
Narrative, a well-regarded online journal, gives quarterly prizes up to $2,500 for unpublished short fiction and essays. The Winter 2019 Story Contest is open through March 31. This unflinching story set in Natchez during the Civil War reveals the sacrifices and strengths of black mothers under slavery.
EPIPHANY ON THE E TRAIN
by Alyssa Metcalfe
Winner of the 2017 Gemini Magazine Short Story Award
Postmark Deadline: April 1
This long-running award with an affordable entry fee gives prizes up to $5,000 and publication in the online journal. In this story structured as an interior monologue, an abusive intimate relationship takes a surprising turn.
BEGINNING
by Claire Wahmanholm
Winner of the 2017 New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM Chapbook Contest
Entries must be received by April 27
DIAGRAM, an experimental online journal, gives $1,000 and publication by New Michigan Press for a chapbook of poetry, prose, or hybrid-genre work. Wahmanholm's Night Vision won the 2017 award. This prose-poem from Issue 18.1 is an abecedarian (each line beginning with a successive letter of the alphabet) in which the mysterious advance of the apocalypse seems inevitable as the progression from A to Z.
BLANKING
by Kristin Kostick
Winner of the Summer 2018 New Millennium Writings Award for Nonfiction
Entries must be received by June 23
Offered since 1996, this twice-yearly award series from a prestigious magazine gives $1,000 prizes for poetry, fiction, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction. Kostick's haunting essay pivots around the question of whether her grandfather's disease-related memory loss is a blessing or an evasion of his traumatic role in the family.
