6th Annual Arthur Smith Poetry Prize (2026)

Deadlines and Prizes

• Accepting Submissions June 1 through September 1, 2026.
• Winners will be announced in January 2027.
• Winning poet receives: a $1,000 advance; a standard royalty contract; and 10 copies of the published book.
• Finalists will also be considered for future publication.

Competition Guidelines

• Simultaneous Submissions: Simultaneous submissions are acceptable. Please notify Madville Publishing immediately if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
• Eligibility: We will be happy to receive work by any poet writing in English. Poems published in print or online periodicals, anthologies, or chapbooks may be included, but the manuscript itself must be unpublished. Original work only; translations are ineligible.
• Format: Minimum of 48 pages. There is no maximum length, but we expect manuscripts not to be much more than 90 pages. Pages should be numbered with no more than one poem per page. Please include a title page with title only, a table of contents, and an acknowledgments page.
• Multiple Submissions: Submission of more than one manuscript is acceptable, but each manuscript must be submitted separately and include a separate entry fee.
• International Submissions: We accept international submissions.
•  Revisions: The winner will have the opportunity to revise the manuscript before publication. No revisions will be considered during the reading period.
• SUBMISSIONS SHOULD BE BLIND. PLEASE DO NOT INCLUDE AUTHOR NAME ANYWHERE ON THE MANUSCRIPT.
• Entry Fee: $25
• Deadline: September 1, 2025
• Winner will be announced January 2026.

Preliminary Readers:

Jessica D Thompson

Jessica D. Thompson is the author of the full-length poetry collection Daybreak and Deep, (Kelsay Books 2022), co-author of the children’s book When Animals Miss the Sun (Brick Street Poetry 2024), and The Mood Ring Diaries (Kelsay Books 2025). A native of Kentucky, she divides her time between two places: a stone house on the edge of a classified forest in southern Indiana and a 1918 log cabin in central Indiana.  She is a retired Human Resource professional and for many years she served as a volunteer in a crisis office and as a hospital and legal advocate for a battered women’s shelter. Her newest poetry collection, Birds of Thunder is forthcoming from Accents Publishing in 2026.

Summer Awad

Summer Awad is a multi-genre writer of Palestinian descent from Knoxville, Tennessee. Her poetry has been published in Mizna, Fikra Magazine, Adi Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, and others. Her nonfiction has appeared in J Journal and Chapter 16 and has earned her a de Groot Foundation LANDO Grant for migration, immigration, and refugee writing. She was awarded First Prize in the 2026 Arab American Educational Foundation Short Story Contest. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University, and she currently works with youth survivors of trafficking. You can find her work at summerawad.com. 

Jake Lawson

Jake Lawson is an adjunct English instructor at East Tennessee State University. He is a current member of the Johnson City Poets Collective, and his work has appeared in Town Creek Poetry, the Tennessee Voices anthology, Appalachian Places, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and The Appalachian Journal, among other publications.

Our judge for 2026 is
Kari Gunter-Seymour!

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the immediate past Poet Laureate of Ohio and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship recipient. Her poetry collections include Dirt Songs (EastOver Press, 2024) winner of the 2025 Bronze IPPY Award for Poetry, 2025 NYC Big Book Award, 2025 Feathered Quill Award, 2025 National Federation of Press Women Award, 2024 POTY Author of the Year Award and STORYTRADE Award; Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022), winner of the 2024 Legacy Award, the 2023 Best Book Award, and finalist for the 2023 National Indie Excellence Award; and A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen(Sheila Na Gig Editions, 2020), winner of the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year Award. A ninth generation Appalachian, she is the executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of its anthology series, Women Speak. Gunter-Seymour holds writing workshops for incarcerated adults and women in recovery, is a retired instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and the founder, curator, and host of “Spoken & Heard,” a seasonal performance series featuring poets, writers, and musicians from across the country. She is the editor of I Thought I Heard A Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices, funded through the Academy of American Poets and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She was selected to serve as a 2022 Dodge Poetry Festival Poet and is a Pillars of Prosperity Fellow for the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio. Her work has been featured in World Literature Today, American Book Review, Poem-a-Day, Katie Curic’s Wake Up Call and The New York Times.

Animal Psalm – THE WINNER
by DeAnna Stephens

Stephens’s work has appeared in numerous journals including Cherry Tree, Feminist Studies, and Louisiana Literature and has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Additionally, her work has received the George Scarbrough Prize for Poetry (Mountain Heritage Literary Festival), the Sue Ellen Hudson Excellence in Writing Award from Tennessee Mountain Writers, the Tusculum Review Poetry Prize, and the Tennessee Williams Festival Poetry Prize. She is the author of a chapbook, Heliotaxis, (Main Street Rag), and was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame in 2022. She currently serves as a reader for Rowayat and teaches writing, reading, and literature at Roane State Community College in Crossville, Tennessee.

The Rest of the Shortlist

• Meuse is So Close to Muse 
  by Elinor Ann Walker
• On Men 
  by Esperanza Cintrón
• Sometimes I Forget How to Be a Person 
  by Peter Grandbois
• Titanfall by Noah Soltau

No Lace Fronts in Iowa City – FIRST RUNNER UP by Meghan Malachi

Meghan Malachi is a poet and writer from The Bronx, New York. She is an Associate Editor at RHINO and the Creative Director of Indigo Sessions. She is the first-place winner of the Spoon River Poetry Review 2022 Editor’s Prize Contest and runner-up of the 2024 Princemere Poetry Prize. Her poetry collection, No Lace Fronts in Iowa City, was selected by Allison Joseph as runner-up of Madville Publishing’s 2024 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize.

Meghan has been a finalist for the Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize, the Trio Book Award, the Hilary Tham Capital Collection, and the 2024 Gasher Press Book Award. Her first chapbook, The Autodidact, was published by Ethel Zine & Micro Press. She has bachelor degrees from Providence College, an MS in Mathematics from the University of Iowa, and an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing from DePaul University. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.

The Longlist

• What the Light Was Like by Sara Dudo
• Animal Psalm by DeAnna Stephens
• Causa Sui by Elizabeth Knapp
• Meuse is So Close to Muse by Elinor Ann Walker
• No Lace Fronts in Iowa City by Meghan Malachi
• Notes on Endings by Clare Banks
• On Men by Esperanza Cintrón
• Sometimes I Forget How to Be a Person by Peter Grandbois
• The 574 Calling Area’s Been Hit By the Blast by David Dodd Lee
• Titanfall by Noah Soltau