The Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize
Each year, manuscripts by emerging and established poets are screened, in accordance with CLMP guidelines, by volunteer readers associated with The Journal and The Ohio State University English Department. Marcus Jackson will select one full-length manuscript for publication by Mad Creek Books, the trade imprint of The Ohio State University Press. In addition to publication under a standard book contract, the winning author receives the Charles B. Wheeler prize of $2,500.
Submissions open September 1st and close October 17th for the annual The Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize.
- Entries of at least 48 typed pages of original poetry must be submitted electronically during the month of September. The submitter’s name or other identifying information should appear only on a separate cover page and not within the document. All manuscripts will be read and judged anonymously.
- Manuscripts must be previously unpublished. Some or all of the poems in the collection may have appeared in periodicals, chapbooks, or anthologies, but these must be identified in an acknowledgments page.
- A nonrefundable handling fee of $23.00 or $11.50 for BIPOC poets will be charged for each entry. All entrants receive a one-year subscription to The Journal.
- If it is a hardship to meet the submission fee, please contact our editor to discuss options for a fee waiver at prize@thejournalmag.org
Please direct all inquiries to prize@thejournalmag.org
Submit via Submittable starting September 1st: https://thejournal.submittable.com/submit
About the 2022 Judge:
Marcus Jackson is a poet and photographer who studied in NYU’s graduate creative writing program and as a Cave Canem fellow. His poems and photographs have appeared in such publications as The American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. His second book of poems, entitled Pardon My Heart (Northwestern University Press/TriQuarterly Books), was released in 2018. Of Pardon My Heart, Jeff Gordinier for The New York Times writes, “Jackson’s collection confirms the arrival of a thrilling new voice in American poetry, one whose writing, on page after page, has the fullness and glow of a jubilee.” Jackson lives with his wife and child in Columbus, Ohio, and he teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Ohio State.
About the 2021 Judge:
Kathy Fagan’s latest collection is Sycamore (Milkweed Editions, 2017), a finalist for the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. She is also the author of the National Poetry Series selection The Raft (Dutton, 1985), the Vassar Miller Prize winner MOVING & ST RAGE (Univ of North Texas, 1999), The Charm (Zoo, 2002), and Lip (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2009). Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Slate, FIELD, Narrative, The New Republic, The Nation, and Poetry, among other literary magazines, and is widely anthologized. Fagan was named Ohio Poet of the Year for 2017, and is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Frost Place, Ohioana, Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Ohio Arts Council. The Director of Creative Writing and the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, she is currently Professor of English, Co-editor of the OSU Press Wheeler Prize for Poetry series, and Advisor to The Journal.
About the 2021 Winner:
Mag Gabbert holds a PhD in creative writing from Texas Tech University and an MFA from The University of California at Riverside. She is the author of the chapbook Minml Poems (Cooper Dillon Books, 2020), and her work can also be found in 32 Poems, Pleiades, The Paris Review Daily, The Massachusetts Review, Waxwing, and many other journals. She’s received poetry fellowships from Idyllwild Arts and Poetry at Round Top, and in 2021 she was awarded a 92Y Discovery Award. She teaches at Southern Methodist University and serves as the interviews editor for Underblong Journal. For more information, please visit maggabbert.com.
2021 Finalists:
Softly Undercover by Hanae Jonas
Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali
Good Grief, the Ground by Margaret Ray
Afterlife by Michael Dhyne
2021 Semi-Finalists:
Cassandra and the Ghost Bees by Christine Robbins
The Giant & Other Stories by Matthew Kelsey
The Parachutist by Jose Hernandez Diaz
Hypothesis by Josh English
Long Season by Stephanie Horvath
Internet Girls by JSA Lowe
BEFORELIGHT by Matthew Gellman
Girl in a Bear Suit by Jennifer Jabaily-Blackburn
Python with a Dog Inside It by Max McDonough
This Smile is Starting to Hurt by Dylan Loring
Greater Ghost by Christian Collier
Woman in a Body by Emily Hockaday
Loteria by Esteban Rodriguez
Shedding Season by Jane Morton
A Museum of False Futures by Connor Yeck
Borrowed Time by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett
What Good Is Heaven by Raye Hendrix
Harmonia by John Moessner
Temporal Anomalies by Matthew Broaddus
Red Ocher by Jessica Poli
Tender Headed by Olatunde Osinaike
Self-Portrait as Medusa by Stevie Edwards
Under What Hard Star by Brandon Lewis
About the 2020 Winner:
Quintin Collins (he/him) is a writer, editor, and the Solstice MFA Program’s assistant director. His writing appears in many print and online publications, and it includes his first full-length collection of poems, The Dandelion Speaks of Survival. Claim Tickets for Stolen People, this year’s winning manuscript, will be published by Mad Creek Books.
About the 2019 Winner:
Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of Haint, (Gival Press, 2016) winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She is a Cave Canem fellow and a member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective. She has received fellowships to attend the Soul Mountain Writer’s Retreat, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, the Community of Writers Poetry Workshop, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is on the Advisory Council of Split This Rock Festival, a semi-finalist and finalist judge for the NEA’s Poetry Out Loud. She has received the Meret grant from the Freya Project and is an awardee of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Grant. Her work can be read online and in journals including: Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Delaware Poetry Review, Figure 1, Gargoyle, Harvard Review, Kestrel, Little Patuxent Review, Love’s Executive Order, Natural Bridge, North American Review, Mom Egg Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Poet Lore, and Tin House. She lives in Maryland with her husband, poet Hayes Davis and their two children.