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- Manuscripts must be previously unpublished.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 is the author of Sycamore, as well as four previous collections, including The Charm, the National Poetry Series-winning The Raft, and Vassar Miller Prize-winner MOVING & ST RAGE. Her poems have been widely anthologized and featured in literary magazines such as The Paris Review, Kenyon Review, FIELD, and Poetry.
She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Fellowship, and served as The Frost Place poet in residence. After graduating with an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University, she earned her PhD in English at the University of Utah.
She now works as Professor of English, Director of Creative Writing, and Director of the MFA program at Ohio State University, in addition to serving as Poetry Editor of OSU Press and Advisor to The Journal.
About the 2018 Winner:
Susannah Nevison is the author Lethal Theater (forthcoming from Ohio State University Press, 2019), the recipient of the Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize from OSU/The Journal, and Teratology (Persea Books, 2015), the recipient of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. Her honors include the 2014 Patricia Aakhus Prize from Southern Indiana Review, the 2013 American Literary Review Poetry Prize, an Academy of American Poets / Larry Levis Prize, and recent Pushcart Prize nominations in both poetry and nonfiction. Her poems, criticism, and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming from The New York Times, Crazyhorse, Pleiades, The National Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review, 32 Poems, Ninth Letter, The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, and elsewhere. She holds a B.A. from the University of Southern California and an M.F.A. from Columbia University. Currently, she is a doctoral candidate at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where she also teaches creative writing.