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2024 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize Winners

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Art Smith Poetry Prize 2024

We are running slightly behind schedule with this, but we are thrilled to announce that we have a winner of the Arthur Smith Poetry Prize for 2024! With 110 total submissions, and only three people reading, it took us a little while. The work was all so very good.

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

  • 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
  • What the Light Was Like by Sara Dudo

Our 2024 Judges

The 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.

Judge: Allison Joseph
Readers: Edison Jennings and Shlagha Borah

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     Arthur Smith Poetry Prize (2025)

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The Arthur Smith Poetry Prize will open 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.

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2024  Final Judge:

Allison Joseph is a chocolate skinned woman and in this picture she wears a bright pink sleeveless top. she has a gentle close-lipped smile, and wire-rimmed glasses. Her dark hair is pulled back.She sits in a natural setting with an old stone wall behind her.

Allison Joseph directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Southern Illinois University. She serves as poetry editor of Crab Orchard Review, the publisher of No Chair Press, and the director of Writers In Common, a writing conference for writers of all ages and experience levels.

Her poetry collection, Confessions of a Barefaced Woman (Red Hen 2018), was the Gold/First Place Winner in the 2019 Feathered Quill Book Awards poetry category.Her books and chapbooks also include What Keeps Us Here (Ampersand), Soul Train (Carnegie Mellon UP), In Every Seam (University of Pittsburgh Press), Worldly Pleasures (Word Tech Communications), Imitation of Life (Carnegie Mellon UP), Voice: Poems (Mayapple Press), My Father’s Kites (Steel Toe Books), Trace Particles (Backbone Press), Little Epiphanies (NightBallet Press), Mercurial (Mayapple Press), Mortal Rewards (White Violet Press), Multitudes (Word Poetry), The Purpose of Hands (Glass Lyre Press), Double Identity (Singing Bone Press) Corporal Muse (Sibling Rivalry Press) and What Once You Loved (Barefoot Muse Press).

Preliminary Readers:

Shlagha Borah is a woman with Asian features and long dark hair. She wears a spaghetti-string top and a serious expression in this black-and-white photo.

Shlagha Borah (she/her) is from Assam, India. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Cincinnati Review, ANMLY, Salamander, Nashville Review, Florida Review, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and is an Editorial Assistant at The Offing. She has received support for her work from Brooklyn Poets, SAFTA, The Hambidge Center, The Peter Bullough Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She co-founded Pink Freud, a student-led collective working towards making mental health accessible in India. Find her on Instagram @shlaghab and X @shlaghaborah.

(photo by Rajdeep Kataki)

Edison Jennings lives in Southern Appalachia, working as a Head Start aide and GED tutor. He holds a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship. His poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, Poetry Daily, Rattle, Slate, Southern Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. His book, Intentional Fallacies, is available at Broadstone Books.

(photo from https://www.towncreekpoetry.com/FALL11/EJ_INTERVIEW.htm)

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.