Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry
Submit January 1 - February 15
In celebration of Sarabande’s 30th anniversary, we are pleased to offer an increased prize in the amount of $3,000, as well as publication of the manuscript with an introduction by Hanif Abdurraqib, and a standard royalty contract.
ELIGIBILITY
This contest is open to any poet writing in English. Employees and board members of Sarabande are not eligible. Agented manuscripts are not eligible. Individual poems from the manuscript may have been published previously in magazines, chapbooks of less than 48 pages, or anthologies, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished. Translations and previously published collections are not eligible. To avoid conflict of interest, close friends of a judge or current students in a degree-granting program with a judge are not eligible.
Submission REQUIREMENTS
Manuscript must be ANONYMOUS—the author’s name or address must not appear anywhere on the manuscript (title page should contain the title only)
Must be typed, standard font, 12 pt.
Minimum length 48 pages
Manuscript must be paginated consecutively with a table of contents and acknowledgements page (a list of publications in which poems in the manuscript have appeared)
Must be accompanied by a $29 submission fee
Must be submitted electronically through Submittable
Multiple submissions are permitted if submitted separately, each with a submission fee. Simultaneous submissions to other publishers are permitted, but please withdraw the submission if accepted elsewhere.
Sarabande Books considers all finalists for publication.
previous winners
2023 Winner: Lauren Watel, Book of Potions, chosen by Ilya Kaminsky
2022 Winner: Simon Shieh, Master, chosen by Terrance Hayes
2021 Winner: CJ Evans, Lives, chosen by Victoria Chang
2020 Winner: Elizabeth Hughey, White Bull, chosen by Alberto Ríos
2020 Runner Up:
Metastasis by Chelsea B. DesAutels (forthcoming 2021)
2019 Winners: Emma Hine, Stay Safe, and Adam O. Davis, Index of Haunted Houses, chosen by Sarah Gorham and Jeffrey Skinner
2018 Winner: Chad Bennett, Your New Feeling is the Artifact of a Bygone Era, chosen by Ocean Vuong
2018 Runner Up:
American Faith by Maya Catherine Popa (Sarabande Books, 2019)
2017 Winner: Pamela Hart, Mothers Over Nangarhar, chosen by Rowan Ricardo Phillips.
2016 Winner: Peter Mishler, Fludde, chosen by Dean Young.
2015 Winner: Michael Homolka, Antiquity, chosen by Mary Ruefle.
2014 Winner: Jordan Zandi, Solarium, chosen by Henri Cole.
2013 Winner: Sean Bishop, The Night We're Not Sleeping In, chosen by Susan Mitchell.