May 2023 Deadlines: 10 Contests and Magazines with Deadlines This Month
New month, new courage: submit your work to these fellowships, magazines, awards and internships. Remember, too, acceptances and rejections are by-products of this journey—crafting your authentic art is the goal. And as always, submit poetry for free to our New Voices. This list is powered by the deadline service Literistic!
Here at Frontier, our digital chapbook contest is one of the highlights of our year. This contest is an opportunity to not only lean into the poetic exploration we encourage in all of our submissions, but also to take us on an extended venture into the terrain of your work, in up to thirty pages of poems. We want to see your breakthrough moments, your obsessions, the journey of your voice. All kinds of poetry are welcome; we set no formal or aesthetic requirements, and we invite manuscripts that still need polishing.
The winner will receive $2,000 and publication, which includes a free, downloadable digital chapbook on our website, fifty physical author copies to share and sell, and the option to enable drop-shipping sales at Amazon, Bookshop.org, and Barnes & Noble, earning 50% royalties. on your chapbook. Additionally, tens of thousands of readers, editors, and magazines will receive chapbook access through our newsletter. This audience can be a formative springboard for your poetic career!
Our guest judge, Kemi Alabi, will select the winner this year from ten finalists curated by our editorial team.
Deadline: May 11 // Fee
Submit a previously unpublished, full-length poetry manuscript. There is no mandatory page count. We suggest in the area of 48 to 88 pages of poems, but all manuscripts will be read and considered. Open to anyone writing in the English language, whether living in the United States or abroad. Prize includes a cash award of $3,000 in addition to publication by Tupelo Press, 20 copies of the winning title, a book launch, and national distribution with energetic publicity and promotion. Our final judge this year is Diana Khoi Nguyen.
Deadline: May 1 // Fee
Foglifter’s literary journal is a biannual compendium of the most dynamic, urgent LGBTQ+ writing today. It’s a space where queer and trans writers celebrate, mourn, rage, and embrace. We accept the following unpublished unsolicited submissions: up to 5 poems, up to 7500 words of prose, or up to 20 pages of cross-genre work, text-image hybrids, and drama. All submissions must be in one doc or docx file. Title your submission with the title of the work(s) you are submitting (separated by commas).Please include a 50-word or less bio in your cover letter. (If accepted, we will request an author photo; jpg or png files are best.) We accept simultaneous submissions; however, please withdraw your piece immediately if it is accepted elsewhere. (To withdraw an individual poem, leave us a note on your submission in Submittable.) Please only submit once per reading period.
Deadline: May 1 // No Fee
The Loraine Williams Poetry Prize is an award for a single poem, to be published in The Georgia Review. An entry may include one, two, or three poems, but no more than a total of ten standard pages in 12-point or larger type. The winner will receive an honorarium of $1,500 and an expenses-paid trip to Athens, Georgia, to give a public reading with the judge. All submitted poems will be considered for publication in The Georgia Review. Winning poem selected by Hanif Abdurraqib.
Deadline: May 15 // Fee
The Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize honors the late Stanley Kunitz’s dedication to mentoring poets. The winning poem will appear on the feature page of the September/October issue of The American Poetry Review, and the poet will receive a prize of $1,000. Poets may submit one to three poems per entry (totaling no more than three pages). Poets must be under 40 years of age.
Deadline: May 15 // Fee
Ploughshares Emerging Writers Contest
The Emerging Writer’s Contest is open to writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The winner in each genre will be awarded publication, $2000, review from Aevitas Creative Management, and a 1-year subscription. You are eligible if you have yet to publish a book (including chapbooks, eBooks, translations, books in other languages/countries, and self-published works) and have no book forthcoming before April 15, 2021. Fiction and Nonfiction: Under 6,000 words. Poetry: 3-5 pages. The winning story, essay, and poems from the 2020 contest will be published in the Winter 2020-21 issue of Ploughshares. The 2023 contest judges are Gish Jen (Fiction), Sandra Cisneros (Poetry), and Meghan O’Rourke (Nonfiction).
Deadline: May 15 // Fee
2023 Judge: Octavio Quintanilla. The award is open to all poets A prize of $2,000, publication by Anhinga Press, and 25 author copies is given annually for a poetry collection. Submit a manuscript of 48 to 100 pages with a $25 entry fee ($28 for electronic submissions) by May 31. Visit the website for complete guidelines. Entries must be original poetry in English. Poems previously published in journals and anthologies should be accompanied by an acknowledgments page. Authors may submit multiple manuscripts if each one is accompanied by the reading fee. Previously submitted manuscripts and manuscripts under consideration by other publishers are also eligible. Should your manuscript be accepted by another press, please notify us as soon as possible. Each submission must be accompanied by a $28 reading fee. If you prefer to send your submission by post then the fee is $25.
Deadline: May 31 // Fee
Submissions open May 1. We welcome flash fiction, short stories, and novel excerpts of up to 8,000 words. We’re excited to read all types of poetry. We’re entirely open to publishing tight formalism alongside sprawling, experimental work. Send us up to 3 poems per reading period. We welcome creative nonfiction across the spectrum. We’re open to anything: memoir excerpts, essays, imaginative meditations. Send us up to 8,000 words. We also accept translations that have been published in their original language, but are previously unpublished in English. Please send prose up to 8000 words or a maximum of two poems from the same author. Please also ensure you have permission from the rights holder to translate before you submit.
Deadline: May 31 // No Fee
Winner receives $500, their chapbook published as print book and eBook, 20 author copies, and an amethyst depression glass trophy (circa 1930). Please submit 17-24 pages of poetry (not including title page, table of contents, end notes). Individual poems may be previously published. This year’s contest is judged by Eduardo C. Corral.
We ask that submissions of fiction and nonfiction be between 2,500 and 8,500 words in length. Exceptional work that falls outside this range has found a home in Swamp Pink in the past, but it is an unusual occurrence. For poetry, please submit a set of 3-5 poems. Swamp Pink is open to all narrative styles and forms, and are always on the lookout for something we haven’t seen before. We seek poems that exhibit how content works symbiotically with form, evidenced in an intentional art of the poetic line or in poems that employ or stretch lyric modes. Swamp Pink publishes four to six essays each year, so we call for the very best writing, period. We believe literary nonfiction can take any form, from the letter to the list, from the biography to the memoir, from the journal to the obituary. All we call for is precision of word and vision, and that the truth of the matter be the flag of the day.
Deadline: May 31 // Fee
