The 2025 Micro Chapbook Prize

This prize is open from December 1, 2024, to February 2, 2025.

We warmly invite you to submit to The 2025 Palette Micro Chapbook Prize! Palette Poetry will select four micro manuscripts to publish in print and digitally, beginning in the fall of 2025. Poets are encouraged to submit a cohesive collection consisting of ten to fifteen pages of poetry, but no more than ten poems. 

The four winners will each receive $500 and 2025/2026 publication, which includes a free downloadable digital chapbook on our website, ten physical author copies to share and sell, and the option to enable sales at Amazon, Bookshop.org, and Barnes & Noble, earning 50% royalties on your micro chapbook. We will also host a virtual launch party to celebrate your micro chapbook publication date. Additionally, thousands of readers, editors, and journals will receive micro chapbook access through our newsletter. The winners will have input on the cover art, and also be offered the opportunity to work with Palette editors to revise the manuscript.

Submissions are open from December 1, 2024, to February 2, 2025. The Micro Chapbook Prize is open to all poets writing in English. We hope that you enjoy curating a micro chapbook from your body of work that would best fit one of the following themes:

Winter

Poems about retreat, rescue, camaraderie, coldness, mentorship, stirring, archiving, forests, chopping, sinking, wrapping, and dreaming.

Spring

Poems about travel, colors, digging, dancing, sewing, singing, feathers, heartbreak, parks, seeking, citrus, and softness.

Summer

Poems about emptiness, sky, expanse, eating, flowing, running, reaching, towers, shouting, fingertips, swimming, and glass.

Fall

Poems about cobblestones, fire, arguments, graveyards, ink, candles, blankets, apartments, planning, reading, and watching.

Submission Guidelines: Please read carefully!

• For this prize, we are only accepting collections consisting of ten to fifteen pages (not including cover page, table of contents, or acknowledgments) containing no more than ten poems.
• 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.
• Some of your micro chapbook may contain poems that have been previously published. We ask that at least one-third of the micro chapbook is unpublished at the time of submission. Of course, it is not necessary for any of the poems to be previously published—we are excited to celebrate micro chapbooks of brand-new work as well!
• We accept simultaneous submissions—just please send us a note if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere.
• Your submission must be no more than ten poems and no more than fifteen pages. Please submit all your poems in ONE document. Please begin each poem on a new page and include each poem’s individual title. In the same document, please also include:
  • A cover page with the micro chapbook title and your name
  • A table of contents
  • An acknowledgments page with any previous publication credits
• When you submit, you can indicate which season you think your micro chapbook best fits. However, we will also consider it for other seasons, so don’t feel the need to get this designation exactly right.
• We do accept multiple submissions; for example, if you would like to submit a different micro chapbook for a different theme, 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.
• Please include a brief cover letter in the cover letter box with your publication history, if any. 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.
• The contest closes February 2, 2025. Submitters will be notified of their submission status sixteen to twenty weeks after the contest’s closing date.

Included Unique Opportunities and Discounts

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 manuscript review costs $99 and will provide you with three pages of detailed and actionable feedback on your micro chapbook. Our guest editors will evaluate the themes, strengths, and opportunities for revision in your micro chapbook as a whole, and may give more specific feedback on individual poems. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and are all incredibly astute poets.