Thank you for your interest in The American Poetry Review! Please find submission guidelines under the categories below.
The prize of $3,000, with an introduction by the judge and distribution of the winning book by Copper Canyon Press through Consortium, will be awarded in 2025 with publication of the book in the same year. The author will receive a standard book publishing contract, with royalties paid in addition to the $3,000 prize. This year's final judge is poet Nicole Sealey.
Nicole Sealey is the author of The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, an excerpt from which was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, Ordinary Beast, finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the PEN Open Book Award, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Her honors include a 2023-2024 Cullman Center Fellowship from the New York Public Library, a Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy in Rome, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from The American Poetry Review, and fellowships from CantoMundo, Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her work has appeared in various journals including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Poetry London. She teaches in the MFA Writers Workshop in Paris program at New York University.
The prize is open to poets who have not published a book-length collection of poems with a registered ISBN. Poems previously published in journals or limited-edition chapbooks may be included in the manuscript, but the entire manuscript itself must not have been published as a book-length work. Translations are not eligible nor are works written by multiple authors. The editors of The American Poetry Review will screen manuscripts for the judge. APR complies with the CLMP Code of Ethics in the administration of this contest. The judge will select a manuscript in an anonymous review process and will not award the prize to any writer whose personal relationship to the judge poses a conflict of interest.
To be considered for the prize, submit a manuscript of 48 pages or more, single-spaced, paginated, with a table of contents and acknowledgments.
• Manuscripts must be received by October 1, 2024 The winning author and all other entrants will be notified by January 15, 2025.
• You may simultaneously submit your manuscript elsewhere, but please notify us immediately if it is accepted for publication. Submission of more than one manuscript is permissible; each must be under separate cover with a fee, a return postcard, and a notification envelope.
• The winning author will have time to revise the manuscript after acceptance, but please send no revisions during the reading period.
The American Poetry Review is dedicated to reaching a worldwide audience with a diverse array of the best contemporary poetry and literary prose. APR also aims to expand the audience interested in poetry and literature, and to provide authors, especially poets, with a far-reaching forum in which to present their work.
Please do not send previously published material. Send no more than five poems per submission. We strive to respond to all submissions within six months.
Copyright: APR holds first serial rights for material that we publish. The copyright automatically reverts to the author upon publication. We do not require that material be copyrighted prior to submission.
We pay authors at a rate of $1 per line of poetry and $60 per APR page of prose.
The American Poetry Review is dedicated to reaching a worldwide audience with a diverse array of the best contemporary poetry and literary prose. APR also aims to expand the audience interested in poetry and literature, and to provide authors, especially poets, with a far-reaching forum in which to present their work.
Please do not send previously published material. We strive to respond to all submissions within six months.
Copyright: APR holds first serial rights for material that we publish. The copyright automatically reverts to the author upon publication. We do not require that material be copyrighted prior to submission.
We pay authors at a rate of $1 per line of poetry and $60 per APR page of prose.
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. All entrants will receive a copy of the magazine. Poets may submit one to three poems per entry (totaling no more than three pages) with a $15 entry fee by May 15, 2024. No limit on number of entries per poet. Previous winners of the Kunitz Prize include Ocean Vuong, Alex Dimitrov, Nicole Sealey, Jane Wong, Elly Bookman, Maggie Queeney, Jared Harel, Katie Peterson, Ruth Madievsky, Iris McCloughan, Joy Priest, Casey Thayer, and Susan Nguyen.
Guidelines
1. Poets must be under 40 years of age.
2. All entries must be previously unpublished poems.
3. Multiple entries are acceptable; however each entry must be accompanied by a reading fee.
4. Entry fee covers up to three poems, totaling no more than three pages.
5. Contest entries must be received on or before May 15, 2024.
6. Contest results will be announced by July 1, 2024.