Award-Winning Poetry and Prose 2020
Winter 2020-2021: Poetry
THERE WAS AN ENTIRE CHICKEN
by Lisa Hiton
Winner of the 2019 Tupelo Press Dorset Prize
Postmark Deadline: December 31
This prestigious award gives $3,000, plus a week-long residency at Mass MoCA valued at $1,500, for a poetry manuscript by an author who is new to Tupelo Press. Hiton's debut collection, Afterfeast, was the most recent winner. This poem narrates a visit to a Greek island where sensory excess and poverty exist side by side.
OUR THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS
by Gary V. Powell
Winner of the 2019 Saguaro Poetry Prize (formerly Contemporary Poetry Chapbook Prize)
Entries must be received by December 31
Kallisto Gaia Press offers this $1,200 prize for a poetry chapbook manuscript of 28-48 pages. Powell's Super Blood Wolf Moon was the most recent winner. Hear him read this unsparing poem about gun violence on the Charlotte Readers Podcast.
MY MOTHER ASKS HOW I WAS GAY BEFORE SLEEPING WITH A MAN
by Eric Tran
Winner of the 2019 Rising Writer Prize in Poetry
Entries must be received by January 15
This award from Autumn House Press gives $1,000 and publication for a debut collection by an author aged 36 or younger. Tran's winning collection was The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer. In this rich and compact poem, an array of scents, tastes, and colors comprise the mother's euphemistic language for warning her son about the risks of haste.
EROS, AS FISH and other poems
by Julia Koets
Winner of the 2019 Michael Waters Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: February 1
This open manuscript prize from Southern Indiana Review gives $3,000 and publication. Koets' winning collection Pine depicts a secret relationship between two queer women in the South. In these poems, bodies of water are emblematic of the fluidity of desire and its hidden depths.
IRAQ VAG PANIC
by Tracy Fuad
Winner of the 2020 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry
Entries must be received by February 28
This high-profile contest in the AWP Award Series gives $5,500 and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Fuad's about:blank was the most recent winner. The deadpan voice in this poem contains both humor and anger as the narrator lists incidents that reduced her human potential to a stereotype.
Summer 2020: Poetry
A CITIZEN
by Katie Peterson
Winner of the 2019 Omnidawn Open Poetry Book Contest
Entries must be received by August 31
This contest for full-length manuscripts by poets at any stage of their career includes a $3,000 prize and publication by Omnidawn, a well-regarded publisher of innovative and experimental work. Peterson's Life in a Field, which will be her fifth book, was the most recent winner. This thoughtful poem about the commemorative coin series 50 State Quarters moves almost imperceptibly from feelings of security to unease.
THE OLD COUNTRY
by Karina Borowicz
Winner of the 2019 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by August 31
This open poetry manuscript prize gives $1,000 and publication by a literary press in Washington State. Borowicz's Rosetta was the most recent winner. Tinged with the wonder and dread of a fairy tale, this poem captures an immigrant child's vague understanding of the homeland her parents fled.
WHAT HAPPENED
by Carlos Andrés Gómez
Winner of the 2021 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry
Entries must be received by September 15
The University of Wisconsin-Madison offers this long-running open poetry manuscript prize of $1,000 and publication. Gómez's Fractures won the 2019-deadline contest. This powerful poem imagines alternate scenarios for a violent assault on the narrator's friend.
BEAR
by Steven Kleinman
Winner of the 2019 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry
Entries must be received by September 30
This open poetry manuscript contest from Fresno State University awards $2,000 and publication by Anhinga Press. Kleinman's Life Cycle of a Bear was the most recent winner. This resonant poem uses a magical-realist scenario to examine how human communities are bonded through ceremonial violence.
TERRIBLE MUSIC
by Chessy Normile
Winner of the 2020 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize
Entries must be received by November 1
This prestigious award for a first full-length poetry manuscript gives $3,000 and publication by Copper Canyon Press. Normile's Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party won the 2019-deadline contest. With the playful logic of a dream, this poem explores whether tenderness can fill the space between people who live in different realities.
Spring 2020: Fiction and Nonfiction
A WOMAN NAMED GEORGE
by S. Brook Corfman
Winner of the 2019 Tupelo Quarterly Prose Open Contest
Most recent deadline: received by December 1
Tupelo Quarterly, an online journal from notable poetry publisher Tupelo Press, offers annual poetry and prose contests with $500 prizes. Corfman's hybrid text gives a glimpse into the interior life of a genderqueer worker in a jewelry store who perceives the strangeness of the world more acutely the more she becomes present in her body.
PARADISE PAWN
by Meg Richardson
Winner of the 2019 CRAFT First Chapters Contest
Most recent deadline: received by July 31
CRAFT is an online literary magazine that pairs original short fiction with the authors' brief essays on storytelling technique. This contest, offered on an occasional basis, awarded prizes up to $2,500 and a manuscript critique for the first chapter of a novel or novella in progress. Richardson's winning entry, narrated by the teenage daughter of a pawnshop owner in Grand Cayman, blends entertaining situations with a darker current of innocence about to be lost.
MUTTS
by Shane Page
Third Prize Winner of the Summer 2019 Masters Review Short Story Award for New Writers
Most recent deadlines: August 31, February 2 (received by these dates)
The Masters Review offers twice-yearly short fiction contests with prizes up to $3,000 for emerging writers, defined as writers whose past fiction books, if any, were self-published or had a circulation under 5,000. Check website later this spring for the Summer 2020 contest dates. This achingly real story is told from the viewpoint of a youth watching "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" while his parents arm-wrestle to settle how their marriage ends.
PLUM ISLAND
by Uzma Aslam Khan
Winner of the 2019 Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Competition
Most recent deadline: received by October 8
This prestigious journal founded by director Francis Ford Coppola awards $1,000 and literary agency review for a winning story. The 2020 contest will open in July. In this complex story with a vivid sense of place, a tour guide in a Massachusetts nature preserve is moved to take action against an entitled male predator.
