Moon City Poetry Award

Moon City Press is pleased to announce the 11 finalists in its 2024 Moon City Poetry Award book competition. The winning manuscript will be chosen by Moon City Press staff from among the following collections:

Laurel Anderson, The Xylem Canticles

Ifeoluwa Ayandele, My Father Paints His Dreams on My Body

Wayne Benson, I Am a Black Poet: Poems

Jennifer Bullis, Landscape With Unsettled Figures

Sarah Burke, Invisible Labor

Hollie Dugas, Filling the Gourd With Bees

Karen Holmberg, Reckless Shelter

Donald Illich, Fireworks Without a Sound

Elisabeth Murawski, Peripheral Outbreaks of Blue

Amanda Rabaduex, A Ghost in the Singing

Kim Roberts, Mouth to Mouth

Our editors will have a winner soon and then that manuscript will become a book late this year on Moon City Press! Thanks to everyone who entered, for your interest in being a part of our press.

The 2025 Moon City Poetry Award

The Moon City Poetry Award is for an original collection of poems written in English by a single author.

Individual poems in the collection may be published in periodicals or may have appeared in a chapbook, but poems should not be previously published in full-length manuscript form.

Open to all writers not associated with Moon City Press, its editors, or its judges, past or present. Students, faculty, alumni, and staff of Missouri State University, past or present, are also ineligible.

No AI-generated material will be considered.

Manuscripts should be at least 48 pages long. Manuscripts should be submitted here, via Submittable: Moon City Press Submission Manager – The 2025 Moon City Poetry Award

A $27 entry fee is due via Submittable at the time of submission; entry fees are nonrefundable.

Simultaneous submissions are permitted, though manuscripts should be withdrawn immediately if accepted elsewhere.

Deadline: May 1, 2025. Winners will be notified in Spring 2026, and the book will be published in Fall 2026.

First prize: $1,000, publication by Moon City Press (including international distribution through the University of Arkansas Press), and a standard royalty contract. Ten additional finalists will be named and considered for publication.

For questions, please contact Editor Karen Craigo at karen.craigo@gmail.com.

Past Winners Of The Moon City Poetry Award:

2023: Tina Schumann, Boneyard Heresies

2022: Julia Anna Morrison, Long Exposure

2021: Adam Scheffler, Heartworm

2020: Claudia Putnam, The Land of Stone and River

2019: Bret Shepard, Place Where Presence Was

2018: Kathy Goodkin, Crybaby Bridge

2017: Clayton Adam Clark, A Finitude of Skin

2016: Kerri French, Every Room in the Body

2015: Jeannine Hall Gailey, Field Guide to the End of the World

2014: Sarah Freligh, Sad Math

All titles are available through the Store page.