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. Poetry Editor of The Ohio State University Press, Kathy Fagan, selects semi-finalists and Marcus Jackson, Series Poetry Editor, selects 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 for the 2020 Wheeler Poetry prize will open in September 2020.
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- Manuscripts must be previously unpublished.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 $23.00 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
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 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 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.