The Moth Nature Writing Prize 2025
2025-09-30 23:59 (Europe/Dublin) | Online
The Moth Nature Writing Prize aims to encourage and celebrate the art of nature writing. It is awarded annually to unpublished pieces of prose or poetry which best combine exceptional literary merit with an exploration of the writers’ relationship with the natural world.
An entry consists of a single poem of any length (not a collection of poems) or a single piece of prose (fiction or non-fiction) of up to 4,000 words.
Each year a single judge is asked to choose winners from entries worldwide. Previous judges include Richard Mabey, Helen Macdonald, Max Porter, Kathleen Jamie and Cal Flyn.
The prize is open to anyone over the age of sixteen, as long as the work is original and previously unpublished.
THE PRIZES
1st prize €1,000 and a week at The Moth Retreat in Ireland
2nd prize €500
3rd prize €250
THE JUDGE
Multi-award-winning author and naturalist, Mark Cocker, will judge The Moth Nature Writing Prize 2025. Mark has written 13 books, including Crow Country, A Claxton Diary and One Midsummer’s Day: Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth. He co-founded several environmental organisations, including the Oriental Bird Club and New Networks for Nature, and has been a country diarist for The Guardian for the past 38 years.
‘Profound knowledge, uncanny ability to observe and heartliftingly exact prose.’ The Times
HOW TO ENTER
The Moth Nature Writing Prize is open to anyone over 16, as long as the work is original and previously unpublished. There is a 4,000 maximum word limit (for prose and poetry).
The entry fee is €15 per entry (a single poem or piece of prose). You you can enter as many times as you like, along with €15 entry fee.
You can enter online or send your entry along with a cheque or postal order made payable to ‘The Moth Magazine Ltd.’ with an entry form or a cover letter with your name and contact details and the title of your piece attached to: The Moth, Ardan Grange, Milltown, Belturbet, Co. Cavan, Ireland H14 K768.
Please read the rules before you enter.
The Prize closes 30 September 2025.
The winning entries will appear in the Irish Times online.
You will need to subscribe to our mailing list if you wish to be notified of the results

The X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize 2025 Deadline
2025-09-30 23:59 (America/New_York) | Online
Prize: $10,000 + Residency Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center
2025 Judge: Shane McCrae
General Guidelines
– Submissions are open July 1 – September 30.
– A fee of $28 must be paid at the time of submission.
– Open to any poet writing in English. Translations are not eligible.
– The X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize is not a first book prize, though we welcome first books. The Prize is open to poets at any stage of their career.
– There are no formal restrictions for this prize; we welcome manuscripts of any style/form.
– Poems may have been published individually in magazines or anthologies, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished.
– Simultaneous submissions are acceptable. Please notify TRP immediately by withdrawing the manuscript via Submittable if the manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
– Current and former students and faculty of Sam Houston State University are not eligible.
– Family members and current or former students* of the final judge or TRP staff are not eligible.
– Current and former TRP authors are not eligible.
– Submitters must be 18+ years of age.
– Submissions are accepted through Submittable only.
– Winner will receive a $10,000 advance, a standard royalty contract, and 10 copies of the published book.
– Writers who studied with the final judge or TRP staff for a semester-length period are not eligible. Writers who studied with the final judge or TRP staff for two-week residencies, single workshops, or other instances less than a semester in length are eligible, provided the work submitted is previously unseen by TRP staff or the final judge.
Manuscript Guidelines
– Manuscripts must be between 50 and 100 pages in length.
– Please include a table of contents (if applicable), title page, and page numbers.
– Do not include an acknowledgments page.
– No more than one poem per page. (Multi-page poems are welcome.)
– Submissions are anonymous. Please remove any identifying information from the manuscript.
– Submit as a .pdf, .docx, or .doc file format.
– No revisions will be accepted once the manuscript is uploaded.
TRP’s X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center
Vermont Studio Center (VSC) and TRP: The University Press of SHSU (TRP) are pleased to announce a partnership to offer the TRP’s X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center. This fellowship offers a three-week residency, in the summer, to a recipient of the X. J. Kennedy Prize and includes a private studio space, a private room in shared lodging, access to the Visiting Artists & Writers Program, and all meals. The X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize Fellow at VSC will join an inclusive international community of artists and writers located in northern Vermont.
This contest honors award-winning poet X. J. Kennedy.

The Poetry Society 2025 National Poetry Competition
2025-10-31 00:00 (Europe/London) | Online
Judges: Denise Saul, Ian Duhig, Susannah Dickey
Prizes: First prize £5,000, second prize £3,000, third prize £2,000, commended prizes £500
Run by The Poetry Society since 1978, The National Poetry Competition is one of the world’s most prestigious prizes for an unpublished poem of up to 40 lines, open to all poets worldwide aged 18 or over
Closing date: 31 October 2025

Rules

We recommend all entrants read the rules carefully before entering. If you have any questions please see our Frequently Asked Questions page.
Rules: General

The competition is open to anyone aged 18 or over at the time of entering. International entries are welcome.
The closing date of the competition is midnight (GMT UK time), 31 October 2025.
There is no limit on the number of entries a single entrant can make. All entries will be considered anonymously by the judges.
Entries will not be returned, so please keep a copy.
Under no circumstances can alterations be made to poems once entered.
Online entries made via the website will receive automatic confirmation at the time of submission.
Telephone or email confirmation of receipt is not available. Poetry Society staff are unable to confirm the content of documents submitted online, so please ensure you send the correct version.
The competition organisers reserve the right to change the judging panel without notice and not to award prizes if, in the judges’ opinion, such an action is justified.
The judges read all the entries; their decision is final. Neither the judges nor Poetry Society staff will enter into any correspondence.
No current employee or Trustee of The Poetry Society is eligible to enter the National Poetry Competition.

Rules: Poems

All entries are judged anonymously and the poet’s name must not appear on the poem itself.
All poems must have a title and must not exceed 40 lines in length (excluding title). Entries can be on any subject.
Poems must be written in English.
Poems must be the entrant’s original work. AI-generated work is prohibited.
Entries must not have been published, self-published, published on a website or made public on social media, broadcast or featured among the winners in another competition before 31 March 2026.

Rules: Fees

The first poem submitted costs £8. Subsequent entries in the same submission cost £6 per poem. Poetry Society members (including those joining at time of submission) get one free second poem, with subsequent poems at £6.

Rules: Winners

Prizewinners will be notified by the end of February 2026 and invited to an awards event in spring 2026. All winners will be expected to provide a biography and photograph.
All entrants who provide a valid email address will be notified about the outcome of their entry by the end of March 2026.
The copyright of each poem remains with the author. However, authors of the winning poems, by entering the competition, grant The Poetry Society the right in perpetuity to publish and/or broadcast their poem. Use of the poems elsewhere for one year from March 2026 is subject to permission from The Poetry Society.

The Malahat Review's Open Season Awards 2025
2025-11-01 23:59 (America/Vancouver) | Online
Our annual Open Season Awards accepts entries in poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction.
The contest is open to Canadian and international writers anywhere in the world.
Deadline: 11:59pm (PST) on November 1, 2025
The winner in each genre will receive a prize of CAD$2,000 and be published in the magazine’s spring 2026 issue #234.
Entries accepted via Submittable only. (See below for instructions.)
Contest Judges
Manahil Bandukwala (poetry)
H. Felix Chau Bradley (fiction)
Shane Neilson (creative nonfiction)
Book Prizes
In addition to the three $2,000 prizes, we’re giving away book prizes to three lucky contest entrants! All you have to do is submit your work to the contest, and you’ll be automatically entered to win. After the deadline, we’ll pull three names from the list of entrants.
Guidelines
— poetry: up to 3 poems per entry (must be submitted in a single document), no individual poem more than 100 lines long, line count must be given for each poem.
— short fiction: 1 story per entry, 2,500 words max, word count must be given at the top of the first page.
— creative nonfiction: 1 piece per entry, 2,500 words max, word count must be given at the top of the first page.
All entries are judged anonymously. No identifying information is to be included on any poem, story, or nonfiction piece submitted.
— Multiple entries are allowed (at a reduced fee, if paid for at the same time as the initial entry: see Entry Fees and How to Submit below).
— Entrants may submit work in more than one genre (see Additional Entries below).

Entry Fees
— CAD$35 for each entry from Canada
— *Early Bird discount until Sep. 30: CAD$20
— CAD$45 for each entry from elsewhere
— *Early Bird discount until Sep. 30: CAD$30
— CAD$10 for each additional entry (any writer, any country)
— See How to Pay (below) for detailed instructions.
— Entrants receive a one-year print subscription to The Malahat Review for the initial entry only.
— Additional Entries: To receive the reduced entry fee(s) of CAD$10, any additional entries must be paid for at the same time as the first entry; such additional entries should be submitted on Submittable within 24 hours of the initial entry.
— Additional entries may be submitted in any genre (e.g., an initial entry in poetry may be accompanied by an additional entry or entries in poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction).
Eligible Entries
— No work simultaneously submitted elsewhere, already published, or already accepted for publication is eligible for consideration (even if only excerpted, or even if revised since original publication). We consider any appearance in print or online to be a publication, including newspapers, newsletters, magazines, anthologies, chapbooks, books, websites, blogs, social media, etc. This restriction applies regardless of the size of the print run or the extent of the circulation of previously published work.
— Failure to comply with these criteria for eligibility will immediately disqualify any entry, regardless of when the ineligiblity is discovered in the process of adjudication (submission, processing, screening, shortlisting, final judging
— The entry fee for a disqualified submission will not be refunded, and the entrant will still receive a one-year print subscription to the magazine.
Notification
— The winner in each genre will be notified by email.
— Other entrants will receive notifications of the shortlists and winners via Submittable messages.
— The shortlists and winners in each genre will be announced in January 2026 on our website, Instagram, and Facebook.
— The winners will be interviewed, and the interviews will be published on our website and in a spring edition of Malahat lite.
How to Pay (credit card)
— Go to our online store to pay your contest fee(s).
— Payment must be made online through our store before submitting, since you must include your ORDER# with your submission. We accept VISA, Mastercard, or American Express. No profile is needed in order to pay your entry fee on our store website—simply choose guest checkout.
— Online payments will not be accepted after the contest deadline (if you have any problems with such payment, please write to malahat[at]uvic.ca).
How to Pay (cheque or money order)

— If you are unable to pay by credit card, you can mail a cheque or money order made out to The Malahat Review in CAD$ or USD$ to: The Malahat Review, Clearihue Bldg, University of Victoria, PO Box 1700, Stn CSC, Victoria, BC, V8W 2Y2, Canada.
— Instead of an order#, you must indicate “cheque” or “money order” as required on the submission form.
— Cheques or money orders must be mailed with a postmark date of no later than November 1, 2025.
How to Submit
— Only online submissions made through The Malahat Review‘s Open Season Awards portal on Submittable will be accepted.
— Acceptable file formats: Word (.doc or .docx) or PDF.
— A single entry is defined as 1 to 3 poems (uploaded in a single document, maximum 100 lines per poem), or 1 short story or 1 creative nonfiction piece (max 2,500 words in each case).
— You can make only one entry at a time on Submittable; to submit additional entries, whether at the reduced rate (paid for at the same time) or at a standard rate, simply follow the same process as with the initial submission (the ORDER # will be the same for additional entries paid for at the same time as the initial submission; it will be different for an entry or entries made at a later date, since these require the full fee).

The Fiddlehead’s 2025 Ralph Gustafson Prize for Best Poem
2025-12-01 23:59 (America/Vancouver) | Online
Good luck to all entrants. This year’s contest deadline is December 1, 2025 (postmarked for mailed entries and 11:59 pm Pacific Time for Submittable entries).
Douglas Walbourne-Gough
Douglas Walbourne-Gough is a poet and mixed/adopted status member of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation from Elmastukwek (the Bay of Islands), Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). His poetry and reviews have been published throughout Canada, and his poetry has garnered several awards and grants. His first collection, Crow Gulch, was published with Goose Lane Editions in 2019, has been nominated for several awards, and won the 2021 EJ Pratt Poetry Award. In 2024, his chapbook Colour Work was published with Anstruther Press and, later that year, he published his second collection, Island, also with Goose Lane Editions. Island centres around the Newfoundland Mi’kmaq experience in the wake of the Qalipu enrolment process, and was shortlisted for the 2025 J.M. Abraham Poetry Award. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing (UBC Okanagan) and a PhD in English/Creative Writing (UNB Fredericton).
T. Liem
T. Liem is the author of Slows: Twice (Coach House 2023), and Obits. (Coach House, 2018). Their writing has been published in Apogee, Plenitude, The Boston Review, Grain, Maisonneuve, Catapult, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. They live in Montreal / Tio’Tia:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territories.
Bertrand Bickersteth
Bertrand Bickersteth is the 2024-2025 Writer in Residence for Athabasca University. He is the author of the multi-award winning The Response of Weeds and the forthcoming Canadian Colored. His current project features the history of Black cowboys in western Canada. He lives in Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary) and teaches at Olds College, both in Treaty 7 Territory.
Contest General Rules and Information:
— Entries must be original and unpublished. No simultaneous submissions and no previously published (or accepted for publication) submissions. This means that an entry must not be under consideration elsewhere for publication, nor accepted elsewhere for publication, nor entered in any other contest. Work that has appeared on the internet (e.g., online magazines, blogs, or social media sites) is considered published for the purposes of this contest and is ineligible.
— In solidarity with authors whose work has been used to develop LLMs without permission or payment, The Fiddlehead will not publish submissions that have been AI-generated or have been developed using AI as a tool.
— An entry must be the original work of the person who is submitting it and the name and contact information provided must be the author’s. Contest entries should be submitted under the author’s real name. If you use a pseudonym for your published works, you will have a chance to inform the editor of this should your work be selected by the judges
— All entries must be submitted by mail or via Submittable. This year’s contest deadline is Decmeber 1, 2025 (postmarked for mailed entries and before 11:59 pm Pacific Time for Submittable entries). No faxed or emailed submissions are allowed.
— The Fiddlehead will not read work that is ableist, misogynistic, queer-phobic or racist.
— No revisions or changes may be made to an entry once you have submitted it. So please carefully check your entry before you enter it into the contest.
— Judging for the contest is anonymous. Do not put your name or contact information or other identifying information (e.g., publishing pseudonyms) anywhere on your actual entry. For mailed entries place your name and contact information on an accompanying cover page along with information about the submission requested below. For Submittable entries, there will be a place on the Submittable form for your name and contact information.
— One poetry entry is up to 3 poems; no more than 100 lines per poem, including blank lines. If a poem is longer than one page, please make sure that each page is numbered and has the poem’s title in the header. Each poem should start on a new page. Poems may be single spaced. For mailed entries the title and the number of lines for each poem should be noted on the cover page. For Submittable entries, the title and the number of lines for each poem should be noted in the Submittable form.
— The entry fee for your first entry depends on where you are living. If your address is in Canada, then the fee for first entry is $35 CAD. Additional entries after that first contest entry are $10 CAD. If you do not live in Canada, then the fee accounts for the exchange rate and is $50 CAD (approximately $40 USD) for the first entry and $10 CAD for additional entries.
— You must submit a first entry (and pay the first entry fee) before submitting an additional entry. If you submit an additional entry without first submitting that first entry, your entry may be disqualified, and the entry fee will not be returned.
— You will receive a one-year subscription to The Fiddlehead with your first entry. New subscriptions will start with the next issue published after the contest closes. Already a subscriber? — you’ll receive a one-year extension to your current subscription. Additional entries do not receive an additional subscription or subscription extension.
— The Fiddlehead occasionally swaps its subscription list with other literary organizations. If you don’t wish to be included in such exchanges, please state this on your entry’s cover page.
— The contest winner will be contacted directly (by either email or telephone) 2-3 months after the contest deadline. Other entrants will not be individually contacted about the results. Authors’ names and the titles of the works that make a shortlist of 10-15 will appear on The Fiddlehead website. The winner will be announced on the website and on The Fiddlehead social media spaces at a later date.
— The winning entry will be published in Issue 307 (Spring 2026) of The Fiddlehead and on the website. There is a publication payment in addition to the contest prize. The current publication payment rate is $65/page.
— The winner will be interviewed. The interview will be published on The Fiddlehead website when the issue featuring the winning piece is published.
— An entry will be disqualified (no matter at what stage in the contest process it is at), if it is discovered that an entry has violated the contest rule on simultaneous submissions, prior publication, or original authorship. The entry fee will not be reimbursed; however, the entrant will still receive the one-year subscription if the entry was an initial entry.
— An entry may be disqualified (no matter at what stage in the contest process it is at), if it is discovered that the author entered that entry as an additional entry and never submitted and paid for a first entry. The entry fee will be not be reimbursed; and if a subscription was started in error, it will immediately be cancelled.
For Submittable entries:
— You can only upload ONE file when entering via Submittable, (pdf, doc or .docx preferred; rtfs acceptable). Do not include a cover letter or bio as part of that file. Cover letters and bios will be deleted from any entry file.
Remember only use the additional entry category IF you have already submitted and paid for a first contest entry.
— For mailed entries: Please send mailed submission to:
The Fiddlehead
Campus House
11 Garland Ct
University of New Brunswick
PO Box 4400
Fredericton NB
E3B 5A3
Canada
Please make cheque payable to The Fiddlehead.

The Capilano Review’s Fall Writing Contest
2025-12-05 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Toronto) | Submittable
The Capilano Review is pleased to invite submissions to our Fall 2025 Writing Contest, “Connective | Uncontainable,” guest-judged by Hari Alluri. Submissions are open November 11 – December 12, 2025.
These are times—again, ongoing—in which so many of us are forced into existences and lives that harm us. And borders, their inherent falsity is why they are such overpoliced things: the binary of belonging must be constantly reinforced. And here a river overflows its banks constantly: every evaporated drop exceeds the category of the body it was named within. Alive means filled with so many desires to become uncontainable: modes of connective relationships that reach across, above, beneath.
Maybe we are in need of initiations, intimacies, and intonations that exceed their own categories. Maybe also remembrances of pasts, presents, and futures that rebel, invoking transformative relations to earth, each other, and spirit.
This call especially invites work that connects against expectations, that refuses the regulation of your identities / subject positions / experiences / writing itself, that connects beneath the surface of social, cultural, interpersonal and beyond-human relationships, that ascends towards possibilities beyond this world. If you’re infuriated by this call for work, maybe your work is calling you to send it in.

About the Judge
Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is the author of three poetry collections and two chapbooks, co-editor of several anthologies, and project editor for recently authored and forthcoming collections. A former Writer-in-Residence at The Capilano Review and one of the current mentors for the League of Canadian Poets P.K. Page Mentorship Program, siya is a recipient of the Vera Manuel Award for Poetry and the Leonard A. Slade, Jr. Poetry Fellowship, as well as grants and fellowships from the BC Arts Council, Canada Council, National Film Board, and Writers’ Union of Canada, among others. Recent collaborations include Aray YAAR Collective, Burnaby Art Gallery, Centre A, The Digital Sala, Filipino Canadian Book Festival, Gulf Islands Poetry Festival, Indian Summer Festival, Vancouver Poetry House, Write, Create, Transform in Crete, and many more. You can connect with his work through anthologies, journals, online venues—most recently in I’ll Get Right On It: Poems on Working Life in the Climate Crisis (Fernwood Publishing), Wildness, and Poetry Pause—and more immersively in The Flayed City (Kaya Press), Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press), and Tabako on the Windowsill (Brick Books).

Contest Details
Submission period: November 11 – December 12, 2025
Submit your work via Submittable
Work must be original and previously unpublished
Submit up to 6 pages of poetry, prose, or other short experimental forms (PDF or Word formats only)
All entries will be considered anonymously. Please do not include your name or other identifying fields on your manuscript pages
Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere so that we can remove your entry from the contest
International entries are accepted
The winner will receive a $500 cash prize and publication in an upcoming print issue of The Capilano Review.

Submission Fees
$25 submission fee for all entries.
Submission fees include a complimentary one-year digital subscription to The Capilano Review.
The submission fee is waived for Indigenous entrants and those for whom the cost is a barrier. Please email contact@thecapilanoreview.com directly for alternate instructions to submit your work.

Ready to submit?
Upload your work via Submittable here.
The winner will be announced in January 2026.

Frontier Poetry — Family & Home Prize
2025-12-05 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Toronto) | Submittable
As the holiday season draws near, Frontier Poetry is delighted to announce the 2025 Family & Home Prize.

Family—whether chosen or given—shapes us in ways both tender and tumultuous. It can be a source of origin, belonging, community, and culture, while also holding heartbreak, loss, and complexity. During the holidays, these bonds often feel amplified: the absence of loved ones aches deeper, and their presence glows brighter—despite the occasional chaos. The annual argument before dinner. The uncanny regression that happens the moment we step through the door of our childhood home. The wild uncle with outdated views and too much eggnog.
We’re looking for poetry that pulls up a chair at your family table. The 2025 Family & Home Prize seeks poems that navigate the intimate terrain of family dynamics—rivalries, traditions, estrangements, reconciliations, grief, and love. Whether you’re honoring legacy or confronting trauma, send us work that is honest, unflinching, and crafted with poetic precision.
Frontier Poetry welcomes all interpretations of family. We proudly encourage submissions from poets of all identities, cultures, and backgrounds.
Guest judge Sean Hill will select the winners. The first-place winner will receive $3,000 and publication. The second- and third-place winners will receive $300 and $200, respectively, along with publication. All finalists will be considered for paid publication in New Voices.
This contest opens October 14th and closes December 14th.
Further reading for inspiration can be found here:
Dwayne | The Poetry Foundation
In the Hospital | The Poetry Foundation
My Own Private Patriarchy | The Poetry Foundation
Telemachus | Forward Arts Foundation
This is How to Make Barah | Honey Literary
fishing with dad |diode poetry journal

About the Guest Judge:
Sean Hill is the author of the forthcoming multi-genre collection, The Negroes Send Their Love
(Milkweed Editions, 2026), and two poetry collections, Dangerous Goods (Milkweed Editions,
2014), and Blood Ties & Brown Liquor (UGA Press, 2008). Hill has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, Stanford University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Hill’s poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals including Callaloo, New England Review, Orion, and Poetry, and in nearly three dozen anthologies. Hill has served as the director of the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference at Bemidji State University since 2012. Hill lives in southwestern Montana with his family and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Montana.

What Sean Hill Is Looking For:
It’s an honor to judge Frontier’s 2025 Family & Home Prize. A relationship to family and home are two of the many things we all share as human beings. I’m interested in poems that explore the families and homes we’re born to, the ones we choose, and the families that choose us. I remember first encountering Etheridge Knight’s “The Idea of Ancestry” and being moved by how the speaker nearly escaped addiction by going back home to visit family. I was in college then, only seventy miles from my own home, and I felt the poem intensely. Around that same time, I read Heaney’s “Digging,” Komunyakaa’s “My Father’s Love Letters,” and Rita Dove’s “Daystar,” and began to understand other ways of seeing family and home. Poets like Jericho Brown, Remica Bingham-Risher, Donika Kelly, and many others continue to help me think and feel through these themes. I’m excited for what I’ll recognize—or be newly introduced to—about “home” and “family” in your poems.

Guidelines:
Submissions are open to all poets, regardless of publication history.
Send us only your best, polished work—unpublished poems only, please.
As part of our dedication to the pursuit of a more inclusive publishing world, we are offering a free submission window for poets from historically marginalized groups at the beginning of the contest until we reach our cap of fifty.
Please do not include any identifying information in the body of your document.
We accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere.
We ask for no more than three poems (five pages) per submission. Please submit all your poems in ONE document. We have no particular aesthetic or formal requirements and consider all styles of poetry.
Each entry requires a submission fee of $20.
Multiple submissions (of up to three poems apiece) are allowed, but each requires a separate entry fee.
Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history and personal bio. Also include any content warnings in consideration of our reading staff.
Work generated by AI will be automatically disqualified.
Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing primarily in English. Some code-switching/meshing is very welcome.
Please do not submit work if you have a close relationship with the guest judge.
If you have any questions, please visit our FAQ page. If you don’t find the answer to your question, email us: contact (at ) frontierpoetry (dot) com.
The deadline is December 14, 2025. We plan to announce winners and finalists in Fall 2025.

Editorial Feedback Option:
This option costs $59 and will provide you with two pages of detailed and actionable feedback on your submission, including suggestions for future submissions. The $149 option will provide you with three letters from three different editors. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and all are astute and professional poets. Please allow eight to ten weeks after the contest closes to receive your feedback.

The 2025 Love & Eros Prize — Palette Poetry
2025-12-07 00:00 (America/Toronto) | Submittable
This contest is open from October 6, 2025 – December 7, 2025.
Palette Poetry’s Love & Eros Prize is returning for its fourth run this fall! From October 6 to December 7, we welcome you to share your love poems that explore the many and varied iterations of love. From the romantic and platonic, to the sweet and queer—the reverential devotion and gut-wrenching longing. What emotions branch from love? How are we all touched by love, and what shape does it manifest as in your life?
This prize will be judged by 신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin, who asks submitters to consider the following prompt:
“Eros is an expansive and mischievous personage—perfect to inspire poems! In the Ancient Greek world, Eros was ‘limb-loosening, bittersweet, pain inducing, merciless, sweet-tempered, all abounding, languishing, invincible, irresistible, graceful, tender,’ as Eleni Vomvyla of the University College of London’s Institute of Archeology writes in an exhibition review for the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens. She also shares that he was perceived by the Greeks ‘in all his diversity: a divine figure, a human value and a daily practice.’ I am excited to read what Eros inspires in poets for this contest, a word that means to call forth witness. What kinds of eros exists in your life that is calling for witness?
“A fun fact from more recent times is that Eros is also the name of the first near-Earth asteroid, which was discovered in 1898 and is the only asteroid to be orbited by and landed on by a spacecraft. Eros the asteroid is part of the Amor group and orbits the sun every 643 days! To conclude, Eros-as-in-desire exists in so many dimensions of our lives; we are interdependent and bound together by the cosmic forces of gravity, natural forces of evolution, and perhaps divine forces of mystery. I am grateful to have the opportunity to encourage poets to embrace the multi-faceted, mysterious, orbital aspects of Eros.”
—Sun Yung Shin
Submissions are open from October 6, 2025 – December 7, 2025. Palette’s editors will choose the ten finalists and any honorable mentions that warrant extra attention. Our judge will then select the winner and runner-ups for publication. The winner will receive $3,000; second and third place will receive $300 and $200, respectively. Finalists may also be considered for publication.
신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin is a Korean-born award-winning poet and writer based in Minneapolis on the Dakotah homeland. She is the author of five collections of poetry: Six Tones of Water co-written with Vi Khi Nao from Ricochet Editions and The Wet Hex and three other books from Coffee House Press. She is the editor of three anthologies of essays and the author of three picture books. Her prose book Heart Eater: A Memoir of Immigration, Belonging, and How We Find Ourselves in Language will be published in May 2026 and her latest picture book Revolutions are Made of Love: The Story of James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs will be released in November 2025. She is also co-adapting a young people’s edition of Asian American Histories of the United States by Cathy Ceniza Choy from Beacon Press.
Submission Guidelines: Please read carefully!
Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English—inclusion of other languages is welcome, as long as the poem is largely written in English. At this time, Palette does not accept translated work unless you are also the author of the original poem.
Your submission must be no more than three poems and under ten pages. Please submit all your poems in ONE document. Please begin each poem on a new page and include each poem’s individual title.
We do accept multiple submissions (of one to three poems apiece), but each submission will include the $20 reading fee.
Writers from historically marginalized groups are invited to submit for free until we reach the fifty free entries budgeted for this particular contest. (This category is now closed.)
We accept simultaneous submissions—just please send us a note if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere.
We are only accepting unpublished work. If your poem has been published elsewhere, even on a blog or on social media, it is not eligible.
DO NOT INCLUDE your name or identifying information in the document OR submission title box.
Please include a brief cover letter in the cover letter box with your publication history, if any. This text box is where you can include your name and/or bio! If you select the editorial feedback option, this cover letter is also where you can name which poem you’d like feedback on. To safeguard our reading staff, please include content warnings in the cover letter, if applicable, as well.
Review our FAQ page for frequently asked questions.
NOTE: If after submitting you notice an error in your submission, please message us rather than withdrawing and resubmitting your submission. We can open it to editing once so you can correct the error.
Palette Poetry does not accept AI-produced work.
Contest closes December 7, 2025. Submitters will be notified of their submission status within twelve weeks of the contest closing date.
Discounts for Submitters
As a way to show our appreciation, we would like to offer all submitters to this prize a $5 discount to our 2025 Winter Keynote! Join us on Thursday, the 4th of December at 7pm EST / 4pm PST for a virtual lecture and generative workshop lead by our Love & Eros guest judge, Sun Yung Shin. The discounted registration link will be included in your confirmation email for this prize.
As a thank you for your support for Palette, we’d like to offer a 10% off discount code on a writing class from The Writing Salon. Find a class and use the code included in the confirmation message at checkout.
Editorial Feedback Option
This option costs $59 and will provide you with two pages of detailed and actionable feedback on a poem of your choice from the submission, including suggestions for future submissions. The three-letter option costs $149 and will provide you with six pages of detailed and actionable feedback on a poem of your choice from the submission, including suggestions for future submissions, from three separate guest editors. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and are all incredibly astute poets.

Mslexia’s Women's Poetry Competition
2025-12-08 23:59 (Europe/London) | Online
Your Poems
This competition is open to unpublished poems of any length, on any subject. Your £10 entry fee allows you to submit up to three poems.
Prizes
1st: £2,000; 2nd: £500; 3rd: £250
Unpublished Poet Prize* is an additional award for the best unpublished poem by an unpublished poet: £250.
The four winners, plus sixteen additional finalists will have their poems published in the March 2026 issue of Mslexia.
Deadline
The deadline for all entries is 23.59GMT, 8 December 2025.
Results
Entrants will be notified of the outcome of their entry in February 2026.
The winner and finalists will be announced on 1 March 2026.
How to Enter
Add the entry fee to your basket and proceed through the checkout (you will be asked to set up, or sign in to you Mslexia account during the process). Once the order is completed you’ll be taken to a ‘Submit’ page where the entry form is located. You can submit at a later date by logging into your Mslexia online account and going to the ‘competitions’ tab.
*If you are an Unpublished Poet (i.e. you’ve never had a poem selected for publication, in print or online, by an editorial selection process) then you can enter our Unpublished Poet Prize. This is an additional prize awarded to poets who have yet to have their work published. Simply tick the box on the entry form when uploading your poems or, if submitting by post, mark your entry with a U, and your work will be entered into the award.
Please ensure that your name does not appear on the poems themselves.
Unsure of what we mean by Unpublished? Want more information on formatting and how to submit? Visit our Entry Instructions for a comprehensive guide. And be sure to read our Rules before submitting.

Emily Dickinson Award, judged by Suzanne Buffam
2025-12-15 00:00 (America/Toronto) | Submittable
For a short poem, no longer than 16 lines.
GUIDELINES
Awards are open to Poetry Society of America members for free. Become a member and enter all 7 awards for free.
The fee for non-members is $10 for this award.
Personal identification must not appear in the submission document anywhere, including the file name.
Only one entry per award.
You cannot submit the same poem to more than one award. The exception: Individual poems submitted to Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award or Robert H. Winner Award may be submitted to another PSA award.
The submission must not have been previously published or accepted for publication.
Simultaneous submissions are acceptable; please withdraw the submission if the poem is accepted elsewhere for publication.
Submissions by more than one author are not eligible.
Translations are not eligible. All poems must be original and primarily in English.
A poem that has previously won a Poetry Society of America award cannot be resubmitted to any of the awards.
We cannot accept corrections after submission.
Submissions from Poetry Society employees, officers, advisory board committee members, or their immediate families are ineligible.
All submissions are judged anonymously.
JUDGE
Suzanne Buffam is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently A Pillow Book, which The New York Times named one of the best books of poetry of 2016. Her work has appeared in Harpers, the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, A Public Space, and elsewhere. She teaches poetry at the University of Chicago.
