BECOME THE NEXT ACCLAIMED TUPELO PRESS AUTHOR!
We welcome your submissions and offer many opportunities each year to submit your work.
It is important that you read the complete guidelines for each contest or reading period before submitting your work. Writers submitting work for consideration may be published authors or writers without previous book publications. Submissions are accepted from anyone writing in the English language, whether living in the United States or abroad.
Tupelo Press does not publish children’s books, inspirational books, graphic novels, or religious books. We do not accept emailed manuscripts for any contest, reading period, or submission opportunity.
Before submitting an entry to Tupelo Press, please explore the work of the writers we have published. We’re drawn to technical virtuosity combined with abundant imagination; memorable, vivid imagery and strikingly musical approaches to language; willingness to take risks; and an ability to convey penetrating insights into human experience.
TUPELO PRIZES
Submission period: January 1st – April 30th
2025 Berkshire Prize for a First or Second Book of Poetry Submission period: January 1st – April 30th (postmakr or online submission date) Extended Deadline: May 31st, 2025 Final Judge Carolyn ForchéPrize: $3,000 Submit Here The Berkshire Prize for a First or Second Book of Poetry includes a cash award of $3,000 in addition to publication by […]
Submission Period: August 1st to October 31st
Submission period: August 15th — October 31st (postmark or online submission-date) Final Judge: Jane Wong Jane Wong is the author of the debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, out now from Tin House (2023). She is also the author of two books of poetry: How to Not Be Afraid of Everything from Alice James (2021) and Overpour from Action Books (2016). She […]
Submission period: October 1st – January 31st
Submission period: October 1st, 2023 – January 31st, 2024 Final Judge: Shane McCrae Prize: $3,000 A cash prize and a 2 week-long residency in Port Angeles, WA, worth $1,500 in addition to publication by Tupelo Press, 25 copies of the winning title, a book launch, and NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION THROUGH U. OF CHICAGO PRESS, with energetic […]
Submission period: December 1st – February 29th – EXTENDED THROUGH MARCH 31ST
Submission period: December 1 – February 29, 2024 (postmark or online submission date) Final Judge: Monica FerrellPrize: $1,000 Prize The Snowbound Chapbook Award includes a cash award of $1,000 in addition to publication by Tupelo Press, 25 copies of the winning title, a book launch, and national distribution with energetic publicity and promotion. Manuscripts are judged anonymously and […]
Submission period: year round
Thank you for thinking of Tupelo Press for your manuscript submission. We are primarily interested in projects that foreground stylistic innovation and hybridity as a crucial part of their aesthetic. Of course, our vision of experimentation is expansive, and includes work that blends poetry and prose, fiction that questions and interrogates narrative conventions, lyrical fiction, […]
Our editors read submissions in translation year-round. We welcome works in translation. Read the complete guidelines here.
Submission period May 1st through June 30th
Send us poems—whether conventional or unconventional—responding to the idea of spring and renewal. This is for a poetry & photography anthology inspired by springtime, with all of its metaphorical & mythical resonances. Jeffrey Levine will supply the photos. You’ll supply the poems. Newly-sprouted work only, please, nothing previously published. In our just-published anthology, The Last Milkweed, we […]