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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, 2025.

The final judge for the 2026 (Emerging) Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize is Carol V. Davis.

 

  • Eligibility
    • Manuscripts are eligible for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize (Emerging) if the author has not yet published a full-length collection of original poetry in English (of 48 pages or more with a press run of at least 500 copies). Chapbooks of less than 48 pages and self-published collections of any length are not considered full-length collections for this purpose.
    • 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 withdraw the manuscript via Submittable if it 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 February 2026 after the winning author is notified.
    • Publication is contingent upon the poet’s acceptance of 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 removed from consideration.
    • Manuscripts must not include acknowledgements.
    • 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may have appeared previously in journals, anthologies, or chapbooks, but the collection as a whole must be previously unpublished.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 that do not meet these guidelines will not be considered and reading fees will not be refunded.
     

 

Woman in a navy blue top with glasses and curly hair looks at viewer from in front of a gray background.Carol V. Davis is the author of Below Zero (Stephen F. Austin Univ. Press, 2023), Because I Cannot Leave This Body (Truman State Univ. Press, 2017) and Between Storms (TSUP, 2012). She won the 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize for Into the Arms of Pushkin: Poems of St. Petersburg. Her first book, It’s Time to Talk About…, was published in a bilingual English/Russian edition, (Symposium, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1997). Her poetry has been read on National Public Radio, the US Library of Congress and Radio Russia. Formerly Poetry Editor of the Los Angeles newspaper, The Jewish Journal, in 2018 she has guest edited the poetry journal, Shirim. She was the 2008 Sandburg-Auden-Stein Poet-in-Residence at Olivet College, MI, and teaches at Santa Monica College and Antioch University, both in California. She was a senior Fulbright scholar in Russia, 1996-97 and again in 2005. She taught in Siberia, most recently in winter 2018 and was awarded a Fulbright Specialist grant for Siberia in 2020, postponed due to Covid, and then canceled. Her poetry is in The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry and Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium, among others. Her work has been translated into German, and recent work is being translated into Russian. She has also published translations from Russian.

 

 


 

 

Click here to submit via Submittable 

Inquiries: cpoetry@msu.edu

Wheelbarrow Books