Brooklyn Poets Fellowships
Brooklyn Poets
DEADLINE: June 5, 2026 by 11:59pm ET
INFO: Brooklyn Poets awards fellowships to promising students in need to enroll in one of our workshops for free.
GUIDELINES: Applicants must not be enrolled in a degree program with access to creative writing instruction or have had a book of poems published or accepted for publication by a United States press. Additionally, applicants who hold a graduate degree in creative writing (MA/MFA/PhD) will be considered separately for a limited number of fellowship awards per season. Applicants are limited to one workshop fellowship lifetime. Applicants who have been awarded a Brooklyn Poets Poetry Festival Fellowship are eligible to apply, but only after 12 months have passed since their award. Current or former Brooklyn Poets staff, volunteers, faculty or Mentorship Program students are ineligible.
HOW TO APPLY: To apply for a summer 2026 workshop fellowship, submit 4–5 poems, published or unpublished, eight pages max. Include a cover letter detailing your writing background, why you're interested in a particular workshop/teacher, and why you need financial aid. Decisions take into account the strength of the poems submitted, fit for a particular workshop and financial need.
We will not review applications submitted by email or applications submitted after this deadline. Fellowship decisions will be announced via newsletter and social media on June 27. We strongly encourage writers from historically underserved and marginalized communities to apply, including (but not limited to) writers of color, LGBTQ+ writers, writers with disabilities and women writers.
brooklynpoets.submittable.com/submit/356969/brooklyn-poets-fellowships-summer-2026-workshops
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2027 Marble House Family Residency
Marble House Project |📍Dorset, VT
DEADLINE: June 14, 2026, by 11:59pm ET
INFO: Marble House Project is a multidisciplinary artist residency program that fosters collaboration and the exchange of ideas, by providing an environment for artists across disciplines to live and work together. The residency is dedicated to ecological principles and integrates sustainable practices, including small-scale organic food production and waste conservation. Residents sustain their growth by engaging with the grounds while working on their artistic practice. Marble House Project is founded on the belief that the act of creating, whether in the studio or in nature, is how human potential expands and community thrives.
Marble House Project accepts approximately 50 residents and is open to artists living in the United States and abroad. You must be at least 21 years old. Each session accommodates eight artists and is specifically curated to bring together a diverse group of creative workers, to maximize potential for collaboration and dialogue while in residence and beyond.
Artists will be notified by email by the end of September.
RESIDENCY DATES FOR 2027
July 19th - August 2nd. Family Friendly Residency.
ABOUT MHP:
All residents live together in the historic, eight-bedroom Manley-Lefevre house, a communal space organized around responsibilities-sharing systems which highlight sustainability and community. The residency is an opportunity to develop and carry out practices of mutual support, group conversation, and to cultivate adaptive relationships with the environment. This can take the form of discussions with guest multidisciplinary artists, thinkers, and activists and other individual and group activities that benefit our community of residents.
Residents will be paired and asked to cook for shared dinners at least three times over the course of their residency, Monday-Friday. . Each session culminates with a short video interview and artists are invited to publicly share their work with our community and each other. Marble House Project provides private bedrooms, food, private studio space, and artist support. We are not able to cover costs related to travel or materials. There is no fee to attend the residency.
Applications are accepted in all creative fields including but not limited to writing, dance and choreography, performance, music composition and sound, film and video, visual arts, and culinary arts. Applications are reviewed by a jury of alumni and artists are selected based on quality of work, commitment to practice, and project description. Please choose the application that best describes your work. Two artists may apply together as a collaborative, and should complete one application with information about both artists Within each application you will be asked to select the session dates best for you.
If you are applying to the ecology residency you must have a project that aligns with this theme. You may also apply to the other residency sessions as well.
If you are applying to the family friendly residency, you must have a child with you between the ages of 4 to 14. You may also apply to other residencies as well but will be unable to bring your child.
Marble House Project does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status, in any of its activities or operations. For exact dates, more information or questions about the residency, visit our FAQ page. If you still have questions you may contact info@marblehouseproject.org.
Personal information is not shared with our jury and will remain confidential. This includes email, home address, phone number and any information regarding your family, anything else you would need to tell us and how you heard about Marble House Project. All of our outreach questions also remain confidential and blind to our jury.
For more information on the ecology or family friendly residency please visit marblehouseproject.org/residency-details
marblehouseproject.submittable.com/submit
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Blessing the Boats Selections 2026
Boa Editions
DEADLINE: June 15, 2026 at 11:59pm
INFO: Blessing the Boats Selections spotlights poetry collections by women of color. As the 2026 Blessing the Boats Selections Editor-at-Large, Evie Shockley will read submissions and select the final manuscript for publication.
Blessing the Boats Selections is named after Lucille Clifton’s National Book Award-winning collection, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems (Boa, 2000), in honor and celebration of her enduring legacy. Lucille Clifton's writings of Black life and Black female life have shaped a sense of what is possible for so many. In the poem that begins "won't you celebrate with me," she writes: "born in babylon / both nonwhite and woman / what did i see to be except myself?" Blessing the Boats Selections titles walk behind and grow out of the poetry of those lines.
Submissions are thus open to all women poets of color in the U.S., including poets who identify as cis, trans, and non-binary people who are comfortable in a space that centers on women’s experiences, regardless of citizenship and publication history. Our hope is that the Blessing the Boats Selections will further facilitate encounters between readers and writers of some of the most extraordinary texts of our time.
Please see the guidelines below for details.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
We accept submissions via Submittable or by mail.
There is no submission fee associated with this reading period.
Manuscript should be a minimum of 65 pages, maximum of 120 pages of poetry.
Submit only one book-length, complete manuscript at a time. If two manuscripts are sent, both will be removed from consideration.
Manuscript text should be at least 12 pt. font. Manuscript pages should be one-sided.
Include a cover letter. Do not include a résumé or vitae.
Please include your phone number and/or email address on the cover letter.
Simultaneous submissions are okay. Note simultaneous submissions in your cover letter and notify BOA immediately should your submission be accepted elsewhere.
Include title, publisher, and publication year of previous full-length poetry collections you have published, if any. Feel free to include an acknowledgments page for any previously published poems in your manuscript.
Family members, or any students who have studied poetry or fiction or literature with Evie Shockley in the past four years, whether that be through a university, a community setting or a tutorial are prohibited from consideration.
ADDITIONAL GUIDELINES FOR PRINT SUBMISSIONS:
Send the manuscript ATTN: BLESSING THE BOATS SELECTIONS.
Include a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) with sufficient return postage.
Please note that manuscripts will be recycled, not returned.
Submissions may be mailed to: Boa Editions, Ltd. ATTN: Blessing the Boats Selections 250 North Goodman Street, Suite 306 Rochester, NY 14607
PRIZE:
One Poet Receives:
Book publication by Boa Editions in Fall 2028
$1,500 honorarium
ANSWERS TO FAQs:
The winner will be announced in Fall 2026.
The winning manuscript will be published in Fall 2028, in an original paperback edition and an e-book edition of the American Poets Continuum Series, with a standard royalties package.
The winner will retain full copyright of their work.
The paper from all manuscripts will be recycled after the winner is announced.
Boa Editions assumes no responsibility for loss of manuscripts.
As this is an open reading period rather than a contest, submissions are not read blind.
boaeditions.submittable.com/submit
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PEN/HEIM TRANSLATION FUND GRANTS
PEN America
DEADLINE: June 15, 2026 at 11:59 pm EST
INFO: The PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants were established in the summer of 2003 by a gift from Priscilla and Michael Henry Heim in response to the low number of literary translations appearing in English. Their purpose is to promote the publication and reception of translated world literature in English.
ELIGIBILITY:
Translations of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, or drama, originally written by a single individual.
Translations should not have previously appeared in English in print or should have appeared only in an outdated or otherwise flawed translation.
The project must be an unpublished work in progress that will not be published prior to April 15, 2027, as the grants are intended to support the completion of a final book.
There are no restrictions on the nationality or citizenship of the translator, but the works must be translated into English.
Projects may have a maximum of two translators but are limited to one original author.
NOT eligible: Translations of works with multiple original authors, such as anthologies, translations of literary criticism, and scholarly or otherwise technical texts.
Note: Translations from Italian will automatically be considered for the PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature.
Note: Translators may only submit one project per year. Projects that have been previously submitted and have not received a grant are unlikely to be reconsidered in a subsequent year. Translators who have previously been awarded PEN/Heim Translation Fund grants are ineligible to reapply for three years after receiving a grant–for example, grant recipients from 2023 are now eligible to reapply.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
All documents should be formatted in 12pt Times New Roman, single spaced, with 1-inch margins.
A 1-2 page statement outlining the work and describing its importance.
A biography and bibliography of the author, including information on translations of their work into other languages.
A CV of the translator, no longer than 3 pages.
If the book is not in the public domain and the project is not yet under contract, please include a photocopy of the copyright notice on the original (the copyright notice is a line including the character ©, a date, and the name of the copyright holder, which appears as part of the front matter in every book). Please note that for some foreign titles, the front matter may not include a ©. Additionally, please include a letter from the copyright holder stating that English-language rights to the book are available; a copy of an email from the copyright holder is sufficient.
If the translation is currently under contract with a publisher, please submit a copy of the contract.
A translation sample is required. For prose, this should be within the range of 5-8 pages (when formatted as required, this will be approximately 3,000-5,000 words). For poetry, please include 1-2 poems per page, within an 8–10 page range.
The same passage in the original language (and, if the work has been previously translated, the same passage in the earlier version).
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PEN/BARE LIFE REVIEW GRANTS
PEN America
DEADLINE: June 15, 2026 at 11:59 pm EST
INFO: The PEN/Bare Life Review Grants recognize literary works by immigrant and refugee writers. For the 2027 grant cycle, we will confer two PEN/Bare Life Review Grants with cash prizes of $5,000 each.
ELIGIBILITY:
The submitted project must be the work of a single individual, written in or translated into English. In the case of translated works, the grant will be conferred to the original author.
The project must be an unpublished work in progress that will not be published prior to April 15, 2027, as the grants are intended to support the completion of a manuscript.
The project must be a work of a literary nature: fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry.
This grant is available to foreign-born writers based in the U.S., and to writers living abroad who hold refugee/asylum seeker status.
Writers may only submit one project per year.
NOT eligible: Scholarly or academic writing.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
All documents should be formatted in 12pt Times New Roman with 1-inch margins. Each section should be single spaced with the exception of the writing sample which should be double spaced.
All applications require the following, submitted as one PDF file in the order below:
A 1-2 page description of the work, answering: Why is this project important, and why did this author choose to undertake this project?
A 1-2 page statement answering: How will this grant aid in the completion of the project? (This space can additionally be used to discuss any permissions, rights, contracts, publication timelines, or other aspects of your project.)
The author’s CV, including information on previous or forthcoming publications.
An outline that includes the work completed thus far and the work remaining.
A writing sample of up to 40 pages for poetry, and 75 pages for other genres. This section should be double spaced for legibility.
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OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Finding Your Way Home
twurl
DEADLINE: June 24, 2026
INFO: For the inaugural issue of twurl, our theme Finding Your Way Home is an invitation to return to a site of importance: geographic, psychic, familial, erotic and ancestral, while insisting that the journey may be as valuable as (or more valuable than) the destination.
We’re interested in wayfinding, waywardness, desire paths and the routes we make across physical, social and psychological landscapes, and those who guide us, when established paths are adversarial, traumatic, limiting or simply ill fit. A “desire path” is the route made by repeated movement; the unofficial trail that appears when people choose what works over what’s prescribed. The prescribed, may also be well suited when presented with the right lens; these identifiable wayfinding tools often include maps, signs and landmarks that cue our cognitive skills through often unconscious recollection. This issue looks to that kind of lived intelligence: improvisational, embodied, local, abstract and or exact. These routes that present desired and unintentional returns to self.
For the inaugural issue, we invite a constellation of poetry, autotheory, fiction and photography that speaks to the multiplicity of Black gay life through the lens of place, movement and return. In a social climate where Black LGBTQ lives remain under political attack and many of us move through the world marked by otherness, within our families, workplaces, cultural institutions and sometimes even in our chosen communities, questions of home and belonging can feel precarious. Also, in the absence of a widely held collective literary canon, politic, or media representation further complicates what it means to imagine “home” both individually and collectively. This precarity, this longing without guarantee, sits at the heart of the twurl’s inaugural issue.
So lastly, wayfinding, at its core, is the practice of orienting oneself within space using memory, intuition, signs, landmarks, and design to understand where one is and how to move forward. In this issue, we treat wayfinding as both a material and metaphysical act: a method of survival, a language of navigation and a poetics of becoming.
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR:
We are not seeking neat conclusions, redemption arcs, or “Disney endings”. We welcome work that resists closure; pieces that lean into opacity, darkness, contradiction and otherwise the taboo undercurrents of Black Gay experience. We are looking for works that showcase a high regard for craft, technique, uniqueness and intellectual rigor (especially for autotheory work).
We seek writing and photography grounded in locality: streets, bedrooms, porches, clubs, sanctuaries, classrooms, backseats, barbershops, basements, group chats, coastlines, church lots; sites where the body learns the map. We invite works that speak to the often shared disorientation of the Black queer experience. Works that lean into quiet and the quotidian . Return to self, to place, to memory, to body; return amid the messiness of living and the weight of sociopolitical struggle.
To emphasize Black gay poetics, we’re drawn to work wrapped in:
Fragrant diction and illustrious imagery.
Faggotry
We encourage engagements with erotics, the body, spirit and psyche as sites of knowledge and meaning-making.
Erotics and the body as archive
Spirit, psychic life, and intuition as legitimate knowledge systems
Collisions between the intimate and the historical: family lore, documents, screenshots, letters, archives, scholarship, institutional language, and other cultural basins.
Bring us the routes you took to survive. Bring us the routes you took to desire.
We want the work to feel like it’s written in Butch queen language and language that embraces your local dialect whether you’re from Baltimore, NOLA or Brooklyn.
Most importantly, we want to feel the work.
Possible starting points (not prompts, consider them potential doors…)
A return to a hometown, a lover, a neighborhood, a body, a name
“Home” as fantasy, trap, sanctuary, performance, or refusal
Migration, exile, cruising, pilgrimage, escape routes
Navigation by scent, sound, music, nightlight, rumor, prayer
Queer kinship as a map; loneliness as a geography
The archive as a lover / the lover as an archive
Language as wayfinding: code-switching, dialect, silence, omission
Black queer time: delays, loops, hauntings, detours, late arrivals
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Poetry
Submit up to ten poems, should be no longer than 10 pages. One poem per page.
Formats:
General Format Guidelines
Submit works that are unpublished. If your work ends up being accepted to another publication before we get back to you about your submission, please immediately let us know (twurlpublishing@gmail.com).
Simultaneous submissions are allowed.
We seek First North American Serial Rights for all accepted submissions; all rights revert to the author upon publication.
Submissions will be read by an anonymous panel of readers.
Upload your text submission as a Word (DOCX), portable document format/PDF (PDF) or rich-text format (RTF) file. No Pages, TXT, or Open Office Documents.
Typed, double-spaced (poetry may be single-spaced) pages.
Numbered pages.
Margins should be set at no less than 1” and no greater than 1.5”.
Please include, name and title of pieces on every page.
You can submit to across genres but for Short Story, Flash Memoir and Autotheory please only submit one piece for these genres.
All poets, photograhers and writers who submit must identiy as a part of the Black community/African diaspora and simultaneously as a Black queer/gay man, transman, stud/butch lesbian, a butch queen, GNC/non-binary or a masc-identifying person.
A short bio, no more than 150 words (Include in cover letter box). This is an opportunity to tell us about your work, your journey as a writer/poet/artist, where you've been published and anything else you’d like to include.
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12th SUSPECT Poetry Contest
SUSPECT
DEADLINE: June 30, 2026
ENTRY FEE: $0
INFO: The SUSPECT Poetry Contest returns in 2026 with its 12th iteration!
In conjunction with Gaudy Boy’s September 2026 publication of Mark Kyungsoo Bias’s MINOR DESTRUCTIONS (winner of the Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize), SUSPECT calls for poems that use BOTH words “minor” AND “destructions” or their variants in an imaginative fashion, together or separately. We want micro-stories of huge losses and macro-stories of tiny wreckages. We want deconstructed lyrics and lyrical deconstructions. We want the irreparable, except, perhaps, by art.
The contest is open to everyone.
PRIZE: Awards of USD300, 200, and 100 will go to the top three winners. The winning poems will be published in SUSPECT; non-winning poems will be considered for publication as well.
This year’s SUSPECT Poetry Contest judge is Mark Kyungsoo Bias, the author of the poetry collection Minor Destructions, winner of the 2025 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize and forthcoming in fall 2026. His work has been published in AGNI, New England Review, Gulf Coast, Georgia Review, Cero Magazine, The Adroit Journal, Narrative, The Common, Washington Square Review, and more. He is a recipient of scholarships and awards from Tin House, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Kundiman, and the Academy of American Poets. He holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he was a REAL Fellow. He currently lives in Seoul.
Friends and family of the judge are allowed to submit entries too. Judging will be based solely on poetic merit and the creative use of the words “minor” and “destructions.” We reserve the right not to make any or all awards, should the quality of entries not merit them.
GUIDELINES: Please submit a maximum of three poems. Only unpublished poems will be considered. Posting on weblog, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media does not constitute publication.
We require all submissions to include a clear statement of not having used GenAI in any stage of their creation; and in the very few instances where GenAI is allowed (please refer to our full GenAI policy), to transparently declare its usage. We will not consider any submissions without such a statement.
No simultaneous submissions, please. Email your submission to Jee at jkoh@singaporeunbound.org. The poem(s) must be pasted into the body of the email, together with a short cover letter giving your name, mailing address (including country of residence), and brief biographical note.
Results will be announced in August.
singaporeunbound.org/opp/suspect-poetry-contest-12
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call for submissions: RHINO 2027
Rhino Poetry
DEADLINE: June 30, 2026
INFO: Our diverse group of editors looks for the best unpublished poems, translations, and flash fiction/nonfiction by local, national, and international writers. We welcome all styles of writing, particularly that which is well-crafted, uses language lovingly and surprisingly, and feels daring or quietly powerful.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
3-5 poems or flash fiction/nonfiction pieces (500 words or fewer), totaling no more than 5 pages
A single, typed document (.doc, .docx, or .pdf)
Unpublished work only (We don't accept any previously published work, including work that has appeared online, or work already planned for publication in a chapbook, book, or elsewhere.)
A copy of the work in its original language if you are sending a translation; the translator is responsible for obtaining the author’s permission to use their material.
Your best version. We can’t accept edits or revisions once you submit.
We do accept simultaneous submissions, but trust that you will withdraw your poem or packet promptly if accepted elsewhere.
HOW + WHEN TO SUBMIT:
While we do accept submissions via mail, we strongly encourage you to submit via Submittable. Please submit only once during each reading period. All poetry accepted poems are automatically considered for our Editors’ Prize; we often award a Translation Prize as well.
In order to allow our team of editors to read each submission with care, we cap our submissions each month. Once we’ve reached our cap, the window will remain closed until the first day of the following month, or until the next reading window opens.
NO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) CONTENT:
We do not accept any writing or translations created with AI software because our publication is an outlet for human creativity. If your work consciously and purposefully quotes lines generated by AI software, as with an allusion to another text or publication, you must cite your sources.
rhinopoetry.org/general-submissions
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call for submissions: Migrant Voices in Horror
Bloodletter
DEADLINE: June 30, 2026
INFO: Following our first print Bloodletter publication, Trans Voices in Horror (2025), we are now accepting submissions for Migrant Voices in Horror, a chapbook of work by migrant poets from and living around the world. Unlike our biannual digital magazine, Bloodletter chapbooks are distributed nationally in select bookstores and available for direct order. Migrant orderers will be eligible for free copies of this upcoming issue, and all other profits raised will be donated in support of migrant advocacy and equality (partner organization to be announced).
First- and second-generation migrant poets identifying as women, trans, and/or non-binary are invited to submit work that offers an inclusive, expansive, and feminist perspective on the horror genre—or more broadly, the horrific.
New and established poets, as well as past Bloodletter contributors, are encouraged to submit.
Up to five poems may be submitted in separate files. Length and style should be determined by the needs of the piece, though please note that we will have limited space for print.
Only previously unpublished work will be accepted.
Bloodletter does not accept AI-generated or AI-assisted writing.
COMPENSATION: Poets will receive $50 per poem.
Each poem will be illustrated by a migrant artist (see submission guidelines below). This chapbook will be published in October 2026.
A maximum of 10 poems will be selected for publication.
Migrant Voices in Horror will be guest edited by Bianca Alyssa Pérez.
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EMERGING WRITERS CONTEST
Electric Literature
DEADLINE: July 1, 2026 by 11:59 pm PT
INFO: For 17 years, Electric Literature has remained dedicated to uplifting emerging writers. Now, we’re furthering that mission by launching our very first Emerging Writers Contest, with categories in fiction and poetry!
One winner in each genre will receive $1,000, publication in either Recommended Reading (fiction) or The Commuter (poetry), and two weeks at the Writing Downtown residency program in Downtown Las Vegas, started by Plympton and the Writer’s Block bookstore. Second-place winners will receive $250, and third-place winners will receive $100. All fiction finalists will receive a review with feedback from a literary agent.
See below for information on judges, eligibility, and submission guidelines.
2026 CONTEST JUDGES: Our 2026 contest judges are Alexander Chee for fiction and Danez Smith for poetry.
ELIGIBILITY:
This contest is for emerging writers only. We define an emerging writer as anyone who has not published a full-length book with a major publisher. Authors who have published chapbooks, indie or university press books with a print run of under 500, or who have self-published are all eligible, provided the work submitted to the contest is original and unpublished.
The contest is open to both U.S. and international writers.
Current or past Electric Literature staff members, interns, or readers in any genre are not eligible to submit.
Friends, family, and close associates of the guest judges are not eligible to submit to that judge’s contest category.
If you have any questions about your eligibility, please email us at editors@electricliterature.com.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Submissions will open from July 1, 2026 through 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on July 15, 2026 or until we reach our submission caps: 1,000 for fiction and 600 for poetry. All submissions will be considered for publication.
Fiction writers may submit one story between 2,000 and 10,000 words. Poets may submit up to three poems, totaling no more than 1,500 words.
Work will be judged anonymously. Please remove all identifying information from your manuscript.
All work must be original and unpublished. Work previously published in any form (including self-published) cannot be considered.
Translations are accepted, provided the work has not previously been published in the English language and that the translator has obtained proper permissions.
Multiple submissions are allowed. Each entry must be sent as a new submission, and an entry fee must be paid for each.
Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please let us know immediately if a submission is accepted elsewhere.
Files should be submitted as .doc or .docx.
Work that was created using generative AI is not permitted, with rare exception made for pieces that engage with the tool in an intentional, artistic, and transparent manner (e.g., “A conversation between Ethan Gilsdorf and ChatGPT”). Any use of AI in the creation of a piece must be disclosed in your submission.
PRIZES:
Winners in each category will receive $1,000, publication in Recommended Reading (fiction) or The Commuter (poetry), and two weeks at the Writing Downtown residency program in Downtown Las Vegas, started by Plympton and the Writer’s Block bookstore.
Second-place winners in each category will receive $250, and third-place winners will receive $100.
All fiction finalists will receive a review with feedback from a literary agent.
Winners will be announced in early 2027.