Deadlines: August & September
Every middle of the month: new deadlines, new contests, and new opportunities for your work to find its audience. Here is a roundup of ten submission opportunities with deadlines in August or September, including Palette’s Chapbook Prize, the Nature & Place Prize, the Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, Hedgebrook, and more.
DEADLINE: 08/21
Poetry chapbook manuscripts of all styles are welcome—there is no theme or aesthetic preference. The judge this year is Chen Chen. The winning chapbook will be published and made available digitally in late Summer/Fall 2023. The winner will receive 50 complimentary physical copies, a $2000 award, and more.
Reading Fee: $20
DEADLINE: 8/28
The Poetry Project invites applications to the Emerge—Surface—Be fellowship program to support and uplift emerging, NYC-based poets. 5 Fellows are selected by and paired with poet mentors, who then work together over the course of nine months to support the Fellow in developing their craft; to explore publication and performance opportunities; and to reflect on the professional and community-based dimensions of a writing life. Ideal Fellows will have a project they are working on or want to embark upon, and feel that they would benefit from guidance and support. Each Fellow will receive an award of $2,500. This year’s panel of mentors are: Myung Mi Kim, Sawako Nakayasu, Evelyn Reilly, Simone White, and Ronaldo V. Wilson.
Reading fee: none
DEADLINE: 08/31
Blessing the Boats Selections
Blessing the Boats Selections spotlights poetry collections by women of color. As the 2021-2023 Blessing the Boats Selections Editor-at-Large Aracelis Girmay will read submissions and select the final manuscript for publication. Submissions are open to all women poets of color in the U.S., including poets who identify as cis, trans, and non-binary people who are comfortable in a space that centers on women’s experiences, regardless of citizenship and publication history. Only paper submission will be accepted.
Submission Fee: none
DEADLINE: 08/31
They want to see your best work, regardless of style, form, or subject matter. Please submit 3-5 poems. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable as long as they are immediately notified if the piece has been accepted elsewhere. Grist does not consider previously published work, or work from those currently or recently affiliated with the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Submission Fee: $5
DEADLINE: 9/01
There are no limitations in form or content; Tinderbox Poetry Journal is interested in everything from traditional forms to free verse to lyric essays to flash fiction. One winner will receive $750 and one runner-up will receive $500. Judge Sally Keith will select the winner from ten finalists named by the editors. All work submitted to this contest will be considered for publication in the Winter Solstice issue, published in December.
Reading fee: $15
DEADLINE: 09/012
Lunch Ticket
Please submit to only one genre once per submission reading period. All submissions at Lunch Ticket are read nameless in the first round. Submit up to 3 poems per cycle. Submit all poems in the same document. Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but let them know if a piece is picked up elsewhere.
Reading Fee: none
DEADLINE: 09/12
Hedgebrook’s Writer-in-Residence Program supports writers from all over the world for fully-funded residencies of two to four weeks (travel is not included and is the responsibility of the writer to arrange and pay for). Up to 6 writers can be in residence at a time, each housed in their own handcrafted cottage. Writers must be women, which is inclusive of transgender women and female-identified individuals.
Application fee: $35
DEADLINE: 9/15
In pursuit of gentleness, nostalgia, and a reimagining of ‘home,’ Frontier Poetry is launching a new contest called “Nature and Place.” They are looking for poems rich and robust in language, technique, and form that pay homage to the natural world and all of the small marvels that occur in nature. They are also interested in poems that observe geography and the landscape of home. Frontier warmly encourages poets of all backgrounds, identities, and ethnicities to submit.
Reading fee: $20
DEADLINE: 9/15
Margins & Open City Fellowships
The nine-month Open City fellowship offers a $2,500 grant, skill-building workshops, and publishing opportunities to Fellows to write about the Asian American and Muslim American communities of the tristate area: New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The Margins fellowship is an opportunity for four emerging creative writers to establish a home for their writing as they make progress on a book-length work. Note: these are two separate programs, each with its own application!
Reading fee: none
DEADLINE: 8/21
CHERRY MOON: Asian Diaspora Anthology
CHERRY MOON is a special print issue of Gasher exclusively featuring the voices of Asian diaspora emerging writers. Gasher seeks to amplify emerging voices in our community while also highlighting the vast diversity of the Asian diaspora as a whole. Work is welcome from anyone who self-identifies as a member of the Asian diaspora, a group broadly defined as people with Asian heritage who live or have lived outside of their ‘ancestral homeland.’ Writers must be emerging, meaning yet to publish a full-length book of any genre (chapbooks & self-publishing are okay). Young Asian diaspora writers (under 18), queer Asian diaspora writers, & Asian diaspora writers who exist along multiple axes of discrimination are encouraged to submit.
Reading fee: none