Contest submissions closed on March 16
Three winners will receive publication of their chapbook
with worldwide distribution and the following:
Grand Prize Award: $500 plus 10 copies of their published chapbook
(chosen by contest judge for 2025: George Bilgere)
Editor’s Choice Award: $100 plus 10 copies of their published chapbook
(chosen by The Poetry Box founding editor: Shawn Aveningo Sanders)
Designer’s Choice Award: $100 plus 10 copies of their published chapbook
(chosen by The Poetry Box founding designer: Robert R. Sanders)
In keeping with fair and ethical contest practices, all manuscripts remain anonymous throughout the reading & judging process for selection by George, Shawn, and Robert,
(The Poetry Box® may offer publication to a few finalists, dependent upon the number & quality of submissions.)
Only Open to Writers Residing in the United States.
This Year’s Judge
We are thrilled to announce that our judge for our 2025 chapbook contest is
George Bilgere, prize-winning poet & author
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has called George Bilgere’s work “a welcome breath of fresh, contemporary air in the house of American poetry.” Bilgere has read his poems at the Library of Congress, the 92nd Street Y in New York, the Chautauqua Institute, and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. NPR listeners know him from his many appearances on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and A Prairie Home Companion. He has received grants and awards from the Pushcart Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Foundation. He is a recipient of the May Swenson Poetry Award, the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize, the Ohioana Poetry Award, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. His work received the Editor’s Choice Award from the New Ohio Review in 2022, and in 2023 he won the Reader’s Choice Award from Rattle. His eighth collection of poetry, Central Air, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in March, 2022. His new book, Cheap Motels of My Youth, won the Rattle Press Chapbook Prize in 2023 and appeared in 2024.
Learn more about George and his daily Poetry Town newsletter (which we highly recommend): https://www.georgebilgere.com/
Submission Guidelines
We welcome work from both established and emerging writers alike. We invite all voices, and especially those that have been historically marginalized or under-heard to submit and partner with us. Every submission starts out in the same pile and is judged merely on its own merit, not the reputation of the writer. We enjoy poems of all styles: formal, free-verse, metered, non-rhyming, experimental, nostalgic, political, erotic, abstract, lyrical, etc. We don’t censor or shy away from ‘tough topics’, however we do draw the line at poetry that discriminates against our fellow humans. Please keep in mind that a chapbook should have some unifying thread and yet each poem should be strong enough to stand on its own merit.
- The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize honors a collection of original poetry in English by a single author; translations are not eligible.
- The grand prize winning poet will receive a $500 honorarium upon publication plus 10 copies of their book.
- The editor’s choice winning poet will receive a $100 honorarium upon publication plus 10 copies of their book.
- The designer’s choice winning poet will receive a $100 honorarium upon publication plus 10 copies of their book.
- All three winning chapbooks will be published in Winter 2025/26 by The Poetry Box (at no cost to the poets), as a perfect-bound, paperback chapbook (6 x 9 inches in size).
- In addition, the winning books and authors will be featured on the The Poetry Box website.
- Entries must be submitted between February 1 – March 15, 2025. (Midnight, PST)
- All entries should be made via Submittable. (No email or snail mail submissions.)
- Manuscripts should be approximately 18 to 30 pages of poetry, submitted in one single document. (This is only an estimate as it’s hard to determine page count depending on individual length of poems. Finished chapbooks usually end up being 32-48 pages with front/back matter, so use your judgement. We’re flexible.)
- Poets may enter more than one manuscript to the contest, but each submission must be a separate entry, each incurring its own fee.
- Accepted file formats: WORD (.doc or docx), RTF (rich text format), or PDF (but you will need to provide a Word Document version if chosen as winner).
- Please use a standard readable font in 12pt.
- Each poem should start at the top of a new page.
- Please do NOT include illustrations, photography or other artwork in your manuscript.
- Poems should be single-spaced with double-spacing between stanzas.
- The author’s name must not appear in the manuscript. Do NOT put your name on the entry. Manuscripts will be read and judged anonymously.
- The title page should contain the proposed title of chapbook and a brief synopsis/description of the collection and/or theme of the body of work. Author contact information is to be collected separately via Submittable. (do not include on title page)
- Please include a Table of Contents page listing the poems in order. (page numbers are optional)
- Do NOT include your name, author bio, or any other identifying information in the manuscript.
- Individual poems of the manuscript may have been previously published in magazines, journals, or anthologies, but the work as a whole must be unpublished. (Please provide acknowledgments page of previously published poems at the end of the manuscript if needed.)
- Simultaneous submissions are permissible, but entrants are asked to please notify The Poetry Box immediately if a manuscript becomes accepted/committed elsewhere. This is best accomplished by using the withdraw feature on Submittable.
- If you win first place in our contest, please skip a year before entering the contest again. In other words, if you won the chapbook prize in 2024, you’ll be eligible to enter again in 2026.
- The entry fee of $25.00 is payable through Submittable (our submission manager system). There are no refunds once you’ve submitted to the contest.
- The winner will be announced by July 31, 2025.
NOTE: Submittable button not be active until submissions open on Feb 1, next year
Need help with using the Submittable submissions manager? Visit https://submittable.help/submitters
If you have any questions, you can contact the editor, Shawn Aveningo Sanders via Shawn@thePoetryBox.com.
We look forward to reading your work!
Congratulations to Our 2024 Winners & Finalists!
Past Winners
