North Dakota State University Press seeks poetry submissions of any style for our annual Poetry of the Plains and Prairies (POPP) Award and letterpress chapbook publication. While authors may call any place home, their submissions must deftly capture the feeling of, as well as the reality of, living on the plains and prairies. Authors may submit any number of poems equaling thirty to thirty-five pages in length, with no more than one poem per page. (Single poems may extend more than one page.) The selected poetry collection will be published as a limited-edition chapbook, hand-printed with antique letterpress equipment. Our finalist judge is Katherine Hoerth, winner of our 2021 POPP Award.
Simultaneous submissions with other presses are not allowed. Authors should include acknowledgment of poems previously published elsewhere. Authors may submit more than one manuscript, but only if there is no overlap in content. Manuscript pages should be numbered, and all work must be of the author’s own composition, free from copyright restrictions. Authors may not win the POPP Award in two consecutive years.
Submissions will be accepted at https://ndsupress.submittalbe.com/submit through March 17, 2022. The winning manuscript collection will be announced in May.
In the case of unforeseen circumstance, the press reserves the option not to publish a chapbook; all decisions of the press in this matter are final.
If selected for publication, the author will receive $200, our standard university press publishing contract with royalties, ten free copies, an author discount on purchases of additional copies, and national distribution. The author(s) must agree to give a public reading at a time and place in North Dakota (or via Zoom), convenient to NDSU Press and the author, the day of, or soon after, publication. There are no fees to enter this competition.
Hi—
I hope this year’s poetry chapbook contest goes very well for you. I was going to submit new work this year, but I’ve been in and out of hospital and surgery since early February, so I just didn’t get it together in time for the deadline. You lose a lot of time during illness. Anyway, I wish you all the best! I look forward to hearing about this year’s winning poetry! Best wishes, and maybe next year.
Thank you, Arthur. We hope you are truly on the mend and will indeed send us a manuscript next year. We’ll announce this year’s winner late afternoon May 9. Keep an eye on what we’re up to, and say hi anytime. 🙂