Category: Call for Submissions

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The 2026 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize is Open for Submissions!

Poet Kari Gunter-Seymour is a white-haired woman with glasses and a lovely warm smile. She's wearing a burgundy-colored sweater.

We will be accepting submissions to the Fifth Annual Arthur Smith Poetry Prize through September 1, 2025. This competition seeks full-length poetry collections by a single poet. Here is the important information about the competition:

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published in print or online periodicals, anthologies, or chapbooks may be included, but the manuscript itself must be unpublished.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, 2026.
  • Winner will be announced January 2027.

submit

Our judge for 2026 is
Kari Gunter-Seymour!

Poet Kari Gunter-Seymour is a white-haired woman with glasses and a lovely warm smile. She's wearing a burgundy-colored sweater.

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.

Preliminary Readers:

And our invaluable readers (wonderful poets) are:

poet, Jessica Thompson is a white woman with silver in her hair and a smile that lights up her eyes. This is a headshot only.

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 smiles with winter trees in the background. She wears a black puffer coat and has long dark hair.

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.

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     Arthur Smith Poetry Prize (2024)

appalachian mountains in north carolina

The Arthur Smith Poetry Prize opens again for submissions on June 1, 2025. We find it hard to believe this will already be our fifth such competition. Read more about the Arthur Smith Poetry Prize.

  • Accepting Submissions June 1 through September 30, 2025.
  • Winners will be announced in January 2026
  • Winning poet receives: a $1,000 advance; a standard royalty contract +10 gratis copies of the book when it is completed.
  • Finalists will also be considered for future publication.
submit

4th Annual Arthur Smith Poetry Prize (2024)

Thanks to our 2024 Judge: Allison Joseph, and our tireless Readers: Edison Jennings and Shlagha Borah. And without further ado, here are the winners!

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.

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

Meghan B. Malachi is a Bronx-born, Chicago-based poet and educator. She is an Associate Editor at RHINO and the Programming Coordinator at the Guild Literary Complex. Meghan is the first-place winner of the Spoon River Poetry Review 2022 Editor’s Prize Contest and a 2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee. She has also been a finalist for the 2024 Hillary Tham Capital Collection as well as the 2024 Lois Cranston Memorial Prize. Her work is published in Milly Magazine, Rabid Oak, Juked, NECTAR Poetry, Writers with Attitude, and NewCity. Her first chapbook, The Autodidact, was published by Ethel Zine & Micro Press in 2020. She teaches rhetoric and writing at Harold Washington College and Saint Xavier University.

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

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

Competition Guidelines

  • 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.
  • Simultaneous Submissions: Simultaneous submissions are acceptable. Please notify Madville Publishing immediately if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
  • 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 30, 2024
  • Winner will be announced January 2025.

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Fantastic Imaginary Creatures

Fantastic Imaginary Creatures: An Anthology of Contemporary Prose Poems edited by Gerry LaFemina. Cover shows a clay figure painted in bright red and green. The creature has wings and pointy spikes that look like pens coming out of his head, and a big toothy grin.

An Anthology of Contemporary Prose Poems edited by Gerry LaFemina

2023 Acceptances Announced

Anthology publication planned for  Spring 2024.

This is the call Gerry LaFemina put out for this anthology: 

The prose poem is the literary sphinx, the literary chimera, minotaur, gryphon–part one thing, part another and at their best, they’re magical, mythical. Fantastic Imaginary Creatures seeks to collect the best contemporary prose poems that demonstrate the potentiality and plasticity the form allows, previously published or brand spanking new. We’re not looking for short short stories, but rather work that explores the liminal space between story and lyric, the luminous spark of possibility in the form.

And of the many fine poets who answered Gerry’s call, these are the poets and the poems Gerry selected:

Valerie Bacharach“Momento Mori”

Ujjvala Bagal-Rahn

“Just Enough House”
Ned Balbo “O Christmas Tree,” and “That Which We Discard We Also Cherish”
Madeleine Barnes “Key Rock,” and “Self Portrait in My Mother’s Closing Lines”
Michelle Boczek Evory “Absolution,” and “Dislocation”
Rick Campbell “Parable of the Forest Pygmy,” and “Forgetting the Nicene Creed”
Joseph Capista “Room for Error,” “Myth,” and “Song”
Gary Ciocco “Being and Becoming”
TS Coody “Mimesis”
Jim Daniels “With Apologies to the Tom Tom Club,” and “At Last”
Anthony DiMatteo “Every Time”
gary fincke “The Hands”
Jeff Friedman “Giver of Gifts,” “Terrorists,” and “Lost Memory”
Molly Fuller “Home Again, Home Again,” and “Tale of the Flopsy Bunny”
Joy Gaines-Friedler “Daffodils,” “Act 20:14,” “Traveling with the Band,” and “The Children’s Ward”
George Guida “Trip Wire,” and “The story of a Life”
Luke Hankins “A Voice out of the Ruins”
Gretchen Heyer“Pasiphae Answers Questions,” “Missionaries Breakfasted on the Word of God,” and “Jute, Two Inches in Diameter”
Tom Hunley “My Chili Recipe (An Ars Poetica)” and “Questions for Further Study”
Anna Jacobson “This is to That”
Peter Johnson “Vaccination, in the Broadest Sense of the Term,” “Crickets,” and “Nice Socks”
Richard Jordan “Jesus in the Café,” “With Feathers,” and “Mackerel Day”
Elizabeth Kerlikowske “At 45th Parallel, Halfway Between the Equator and the North Pole,” and “Tabula Rasa”
Nina Kossman “Kharkiv”
Gerry LaFemina “Fantastic Imaginary Creatures,” “Happy Pigs,” and “Bad Medicine”
Joseph Lerner “The Black Egret”
Geri Lipschultz “Aphrodite in Manhattan”
Lorette C. Luzajic “Feathers,” and “January River”
Gary McDowell “Prose Poem on the Nature of Things; or, Armchair Philosophy,” and “Another Apocalypse”
Kathleen McGookey “Night Sky with Calculus Worksheet”
Jennifer Militello “Identifying the Pathogen,” “Dear B,” and “Antidote with Attempts at Diagnosis”
Robert Miltner “Wolf Dancing,” and “Hopeless”
Erin Murphy “Ekphrasis,” “Gerunding,” and “Hula Dancer”
kerry neville “Decade”
Robert Perchan “The Unselfish Elfins with their Trusty Hammers,” “At Home with Marlboro Jones,” and “The Orgun Box Junkies”
Christine Rhein “Drone Pilot,” and “Sunday Night Retail”
Jane Satterfield “Latin 121,” and “Abbreviated Inventory”
Katherine Smith “Crossword,” and “Quilt”
Joshua Michael Stewart “Yellow,” and “Book of Love”
Virgil Suárez “Chinese Weather Balloon”
Matthew Thorburn “A Hundred Birds,” and “How it Starts”
Eric Torgersen “My Blindness”
Patricia Valdata “Mayfly”
Doug Van Gundy “Sideshow, Barbour County Fairgrounds, 1975,” and “To Join the Circus”
Elinor Ann Walker “Object Impermanence,” and “Fugue State”
Greg Watson “Why I Live in a Cold Climate”
Cathy Wittmeyer “Max Beckmann, Still Life with Fallen Candles, oil on canvas, 1929,” and “Otto Dix, Horse Cadaver, etching & drypoint, 1924”
George Yatchisin “Leap Year”
Michael T. Young “Quoting Blake to Mother,” and “Sweaty Palms”

About the editor, Gerry LaFemina

Gerry LaFemina’s flash creative nonfiction essay collection, The Pursuit: A Meditation on Happiness, came out in 2022. His poetry collections include Baby Steps in Doomsday Prepping, The Story of Ash and Little Heretic. His essays on prosody, Palpable Magic, came out in 2015 and Kendall Hunt recently released his textbook, Composing Poetry: A Guide to Writing Poems and Thinking Lyrically.