Deadlines: May & June
Every middle of the month: new deadlines, new contests, and new opportunities for your work to find its audience. Here is a roundup of submission opportunities with deadlines in May or June, including Palette’s Sappho Prize, the Auburn Witness Prize, fellowships, residencies, and others.
DEADLINE: 06/19
This contest only accepts submissions from women poets. ALL women are welcome to submit (cis and trans). The winning poet will be awarded $3000, publication, and an interview with Palette Poetry. Second and third place will win $300 & $200 respectively, as well as publication. The top ten finalists will be selected by the editors, and guest judge Jos Charles will then select the winner and two runners-up. Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English. Simultaneous submissions are welcome, and only unpublished submissions are accepted. There is no page requirement, but submission must be no more than 3 poems.
Reading Fee: $20
For their winter 2022 issue, guest-edited by Safia Elhillo, Mizna is seeking works that demonstrate the infinitely varied and kaleidoscopic nature of the Black SWANA (South West Asian and North African) experience. The work itself does not have to be about the Black SWANA experience— rather, through the range of themes, forms, genres, and voices, Mizna hopes to assemble an issue that serves as a platform for critical exchange between authors and as a record of the current moment as it pertains to the Black SWANA experience. Literary works of poetry, visual poetry, fiction, flash fiction, nonfiction, creative nonfiction, comics, collage, invented forms, and any forms of mixed print or hybrid work will all be considered. Those submitting work should identify as Black. Simultaneous submissions are accepted.
Reading fee: none
DEADLINE: 05/31
The editors of the Gettysburg Review are interested in both short and long poems of nearly any length or aesthetic bent. Poetry submissions should consist of one to five poems, depending on length, formatted either single- or double-spaced. If, however, your poem is a book-length epic, then you should think about excerpting. While they charge a small fee for standard online submissions, snail-mail submissions are welcome free of charge.
Reading fee: $3
DEADLINE: 05/31
Poet Lore is the nation’s oldest poetry journal. Published with the conviction that poetry provides a record of human experience as valuable as history, Poet Lore’s intended audience is broadly inclusive. General submissions are open through May. Beginning with Volume 117, Summer/Fall 2022, Poet Lore will pay contributors $50 per published poem. Submit up to 5 poems (maximum 10 pages). Simultaneous submissions are accepted.
Reading fee: none
DEADLINE: 6/01
Auburn Witness Poetry Prize
A prize of $1,000 and publication in Southern Humanities Review is given annually for a poem of witness in honor of the late poet Jake Adam York. The winner also receives travel expenses to give a reading at a poetry event at Auburn University in Alabama in October with the contest judge. This year’s judge is Rick Barot. Each entrant may submit up to three poems of witness. Entries must be previously unpublished, and simultaneous submissions are accepted.
Reading Fee: $15
DEADLINE: 6/06
The Artist in Residence (AIR) program awards fully sponsored residencies to approximately 50 local, national, and international artists each year. Residencies of four to ten weeks include studio space, chef-prepared meals, housing, travel, and living expenses. This includes paid roundtrip airfare and up to $1,000 a month of either a stipend or reimbursed expenses. AIRs become part of a dynamic community of artists participating in Headlands’ other programs, allowing for exchange and collaborative relationships to develop within the artist community on campus. Artists selected for this program are at all career stages and work in all media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, new media, installation, fiction and nonfiction writing, poetry, dance, music, interdisciplinary, social practice, and architecture. No letters of recommendation required, only the names of three references. Artists not currently enrolled in an academic program at the time requested residency would take place are eligible.
Reading fee: $45
DEADLINE: 6/10
Best New Poets is an annual anthology of fifty poems from emerging writers. All entries go into a single anonymized pool where readers rank the submissions. A finalist pool of 150 to 300 poems then goes to a guest editor for review, and that guest editor selects the final fifty poems for the book. The 2022 guest editor is Paula Bohince. The poems submitted for Best New Poets 2022 must either be unpublished work or work published after January 1, 2021 (and where the writer currently retains all rights allowing the writer to publish it again without permission from another magazine or publisher). Best New Poets 2022 is a book for emerging writers. We will only accept submissions from writers who have NOT yet published a book-length poetry collection. This includes self-published books if they were sold online, in stores, or at readings. For the purposes of BNP eligibility, we do not consider chapbooks to be “book length,” and poets with only chapbook publications remain eligible to enter.
Reading fee: $4.75
DEADLINE: 6/15
Chicago Review
Simultaneous submissions are allowed but discouraged. While there are no strict length requirements, the poetry editors prefer to read at least 3 pages of work. Please include a cover letter. Contributors receive three copies of the issue in which their work appears, plus a one-year subscription.
Reading fee: $3.50
Residency applications are now open for 2022-23. The residency program welcomes artists and writers working across all mediums and genres for two, three, and four-week sessions. Residents enjoy well-lit, private studios within a short walk to residency housing, dining hall, and local amenities. Accommodations include a private room and shared common areas. A VSC residency provides artists and writers the time and space to focus on their creative practice in an inclusive, international community within a small Vermont village. Residents can explore swimming holes, hiking and biking trails, as well as the rural charm of neighboring towns, while expanding their creative potential and building a solid network of friends and mentors.
Reading fee: $25
DEADLINE: 6/30
Fairy Tale Review
The Rainbow Issue of Fairy Tale Review will be dedicated to queer fairy tales written by queer writers. Prose Editor Benjamin Schaefer will serve as Editor for the issue. Since its inception, Fairy Tale Review has been committed to contributor diversity and inclusive engagement. While The Rainbow Issue will be dedicated to queer fairy-tale poetry and prose written by writers who self-identify as members of the LGBTQIA+ community, Fairy Tale Review is especially interested in submissions by writers working at the intersection of queerness, including women and nonbinary writers, BIPOC, writers with disabilities, and writers from other marginalized and underrepresented groups in mainstream publishing. Submissions must be previously unpublished, both in print and online. Writers may submit up to four poems totaling no more than ten pages. Contributors will receive two (2) issues of The Rainbow Issue and a $50 honorarium upon publication.
Reading fee: none