Deadline: January 14, 2024
Entry fee: $28
About the competition
The competition is organized by the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University.
The competition is open to anyone, except Colorado State University students, alumni, and employees. Entrants must be at least 18 years old.
The Colorado Prize for Poetry is an international poetry book manuscript contest.
Manuscripts must be at least 48 pages but no more than 100 pages. They may be composed of any number of poems. The theme and style are both open.
Manuscripts may consist of poems that have been published, but the manuscript as a whole must be unpublished.
There is a $28 online entry fee, which includes a one-year subscription to Colorado Review.
The winner receives a $2,500 honorarium and publication of his or her book by the Center for Literary Publishing.
Competition guideline
- When your manuscript arrives (if you submit by mail), it is logged into our Colorado Prize database by our office assistant. The top cover sheet (with your name and address) is removed and filed away until the contest is over. Identities of authors submitting their manuscripts online are not visible to any of the judges.
- Once all the entries have been received–whether paper or electronic–and the authors’ identities removed, they are divided among six to eight (depending on the total number of entries received) outside preliminary judges; the Center does not use interns to judge for this contest. Each preliminary judge will select three to four manuscripts (depending on the number of preliminary judges we require), for a total of twenty to twenty-four finalists. If a judge recognizes the work of a colleague, student, or friend, he or she contacts the Center and that manuscript is sent to another judge.
- The final judge then receives the finalists from which to select the winner. If the final judge wishes to see additional manuscripts from the preliminary judges, he or she may request them; the judge is not, however, permitted to request specific manuscripts. Friends, colleagues, and students (current or former) of the judge are not eligible to compete, and the judge agrees to refrain as well from selecting any manuscript that presents a conflict of interest (selecting, for example, a manuscript he or she has helped to develop)
- Check out the whole guideline and submit an entry here.
