Eligibility and Guidelines: Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize

The RCAH Center for Poetry at Michigan State University, in cooperation with the MSU Press, announces reading dates annually for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. The winner will receive $1,000 and publication within two years of selection under the Wheelbarrow Books imprint. The submission period is from mid-August through October 1, 2024. The final judge for the 2025 (Established) Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize is Leila Chatti.

 

Eligibility

• Manuscripts are eligible for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize (Established) if the author has published at least one full-length collection of original poetry in English (of 48 pages or more with a press run of at least 500 copies). This round is not open to first books. Translations are not eligible.
• Current faculty, staff, and students of Michigan State University are not eligible to submit their work.
• Multiple submissions are welcome and simultaneous submissions are acceptable (please inform us if the manuscript is accepted elsewhere).
• The RCAH Center for Poetry at Michigan State University reserves the right to consider all entrants for publication; a list of winners and finalists will be posted on the Center for Poetry website in early February 2025 after the winning author is notified.
• Publication is contingent upon the poet’s agreeing to the terms of the publishing agreement.

Guidelines

• Manuscripts must be in English and a minimum 64 pages, typed in a 12-point font.
• Manuscripts must be submitted as a PDF file.
• The poet's name or identifying information is not to appear on the manuscript. Include just one title page with the title only. List all other contact information in the entry form of the submissions manager. Entries are judged anonymously. If any identifying information is found in the manuscript, the manuscript will be disqualified.
• Submitted poems may have appeared previously in journals, anthologies, or chapbooks, but the collection as a whole must be previously unpublished.
• Include the nonrefundable reading fee of $15 with your submission. Submissions received without this fee will not be accepted or considered.
• Submissions will only be accepted via Submittable.

 

About Final Judge Leila Chatti:

Leila Chatti is a Tunisian-American poet and author of Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), winner of the 2021 Levis Reading Prize, the 2021 Luschei Prize for African Poetry, and longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, and four chapbooks. Her honors include multiple Pushcart Prizes, grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and Cleveland State University, where she was the inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Publishing and Writing. Her poems appear in The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Atlantic, POETRY, and elsewhere. She is a Provost Fellow at the University of Cincinnati and teaches in Pacific University’s M.F.A. program.

 

 

Click here to submit via Submittable