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. Associate Poetry Editor of The Ohio State University Press, Pablo Tanguay, selects semi-finalists and Kathy Fagan, Series Poetry Editor, selects one full-length manuscript for publication by Mad River 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 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- Manuscripts must be previously unpublished.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 $28.00 will be charged for each entry. All entrants receive a one-year subscription to The Journal.
Please direct all inquiries to prize@thejournalmag.org
The winning entry will be announced in January.
Submit via Submittable starting September 1st: https://thejournal.submittable.com/submit
About the Judge:
Kathy Fagan’s fifth collection of poetry, Sycamore, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2017. Her previous collections include Lip (Eastern Washington University Press, 2009); The Charm (Zoo Press, 2002); Moving & St. Rage (University of North Texas Press, 1999), winner of the 1998 Vassar Miller Prize for Poetry; and The Raft (Dutton Press, 1985), winner of the National Poetry Series.
Fagan is the recipient of fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ohio Arts Council. She is currently a professor of English and Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University, poetry editor of OSU Press, and advisor to The Journal.
About the 2016 Winner:
BK Fischer is the author of two books of poetry, Mutiny Gallery, winner of the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize from Truman State, and St. Rage’s Vault, which received the 2012 Washington Prize from The Word Works. My Lover’s Discourse, a gurlesque remix of Roland Barthes, is due out from Tinderbox Editions in late 2017. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, FIELD, Ninth Letter, Literary Mama, WSQ, Blackbird, and other journals, and are forthcoming in Kenyon Review. Also the author of a critical study, Museum Mediations: Reframing Ekphrasis in Contemporary American Poetry, she teaches the Comma Sutra at Columbia University and is a poetry editor at Boston Review