Jump to navigation Skip to content
A prize of $1,000 is given annually for a single poem. Marge Piercy will judge. Submit up to five poems of no more than two pages each with a $15 entry fee by January 12. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Up to three grants of up to $5,000 each and publication in the Gay & Lesbian Review will be given annually for a project “with LGBTQ+ identity, experiences, or history as their primary focus” by a poet or prose writer. Students enrolled in any master’s or PhD program at the time of application whose “proposed project makes a contribution to LGBTQ+ scholarship or the arts” are eligible. Submit a 100-word project summary, a project description, a description of the proposed article, a biographical sketch, a résumé, a budget and budget narrative, an anticipated time line, a list of other funding sources for the project, and a letter verifying graduate student status by February 15. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Two prizes of $3,000 each and publication by University of Nebraska Press are given annually for a poetry collection and a story collection. Submit a poetry manuscript of at least 50 pages or a fiction manuscript of at least 150 pages with a $25 entry fee by March 15. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
A prize of $1,000 and publication by Schaffner Press is given annually for a poetry collection, a novel, a story collection, an essay collection, or a memoir that “deals in some way with the subject of music (of any genre and period) and its influence.” Submit a poetry collection of at least 60 pages or a prose manuscript of 75,000 to 100,000 words with a $25 entry fee by January 31. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
In a tribute published in the Yale Review to Ellen Bryant Voigt, who passed away in October, executive editor Meghan O’Rourke writes: “Through her, I learned to read like a poet. Not to identify themes, as I’d been trained to do as an undergraduate at Yale, but to attend to effects.” This type of close examination included describing poems by how many medium-length lines and periods were in a poem, and how many lines a sentence takes up. “Her rigor taught me how to read my own work as I’d learned to read others’: closely enough to see what it was resisting,” writes O’Rourke. Revisit a poem you’ve written and consider what the work may want to be, and what it might be resisting. What about its syntax or grammar might lead you to these conclusions? Explore reworking the poem a little or a lot to shape how it arrives at its desired effects, or resists them.
“You have to learn to write when you don’t feel like it.” —Raquel Gutiérrez, author of Southwest Reconstruction
The author of Ocean of Clouds (Knopf, 2025) considers the lineage of his own loping lines and encourages poets to try them.
“This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.” In this video that originally aired in 2012, poet Joy Harjo reads her poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here,” which appears in her collection The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (Norton, 1994), for PBS NewsHour.
Write a poem that begins with the image of an animal arriving where it should not be, such as a whale in an office space or a Zebra in a suburban backyard. Allow this surreal scene to take you to unexpected places and metaphors. Is the animal an omen or is it concealing a secret? Focus on the literal and symbolic dimensions of the encounter, drawing out the scene to illuminate overlooked truths, inner stirrings, and the quiet absurdities of the world around you.
The author of Ocean of Clouds (Knopf, 2025) considers the benefits of planning elements of a poem before its composition.
