Contest will Open on Feb 1, 2027
(See details below)
2027 Contest Details
TWO winners receive publication of their chapbook
with worldwide distribution and the following:
Grand Prize Award: $750 plus 10 copies of their published chapbook
(chosen by contest judge for 2027: Ellen Bass)
Editor’s Choice Award: $250 plus 10 copies of their published chapbook
(chosen by The Poetry Box founding editor: Shawn Aveningo Sanders)
In keeping with fair and ethical contest practices, all manuscripts remain anonymous throughout the reading & judging process for selection by Ellen and Shawn.
(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 2027 chapbook contest is
Ellen Bass, award-winning poet, author, teacher
Ellen Bass is a Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets. Her most recent book, Indigo, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020 and was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Publishers Triangle Award, and the Northern California Book Award. Other poetry collections include Like a Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014)—which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Publishers Triangle Award, the Milt Kessler Poetry Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Northern California Book Award—The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), and Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002), which won the Lambda Literary Award. She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks! (Doubleday, 1973).
Her poems have frequently appeared in The New Yorker and The American Poetry Review, as well as in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Sun and many other journals and anthologies. She was awarded Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and The California Arts Council and received the Elliston Book Award for Poetry from the University of Cincinnati, Nimrod/Hardman’s Pablo Neruda Prize, The Missouri Review’s Larry Levis Award, the Greensboro Poetry Prize, the New Letters Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Poetry Prize, and five Pushcart Prizes.
Ellen founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz, CA jails. She currently teaches in the low residency MFA writing program at Pacific University.
Learn more at EllenBass.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 $750 honorarium upon publication plus 10 copies of their book.
- The editor’s choice winning poet will receive a $250 honorarium upon publication plus 10 copies of their book.
- Both winning chapbooks will be professionally designed and published in Winter 2027/28 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 and an episode of The Poetry Box LIVE.
- Entries must be submitted between February 1 – March 15, 2027. (Midnight, PST)
- All entries should be made via Submittable. (No email or snail mail submissions.)
- Manuscripts should be approximately 18 to 30 pages of poems, 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 12 pt.
- 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.
- Students of Ellen Bass are eligible, as long as she is not intimately familiar with the poems in your manuscript that you are submitting to this year’s contest.
- If you are a winner in our contest, please skip two years before entering the contest again. In other words, if you won the chapbook prize in 2025, you’ll be eligible to enter again in 2028.
- 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, 2027. (or sooner)
NOTE: Submittable button not be active until submissions open on Feb 1, 2027
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!
The Results for 2026 Contest:
(prizewinning books to be published on February 1, 2027)
Past Winners
