Submissions for The Louisville Review’s NATIONAL POETRY BOOK CONTEST are now closed. Thank you to everyone who submitted! Stay tuned for results in early 2025.
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We are thrilled to announce that Jeanie Thompson will serve as distinguished judge for our 2024 National Poetry Book Contest!
This first-book contest invites poets living in the United States who have not yet published a full-length book of poetry to submit manuscripts of 48-70 pages.
Winner will receive $1,000 and Publication through The Louisville Review’s Fleur-de-Lis Press, 25 author copies, and distribution through Barnes & Nobel and Amazon.
The winning book will be reviewed online in North American Review, the longest running literary magazine in the nation.
Finalists will receive publication of a selected, previously unpublished poem in The Louisville Review, and we will hold an online reading for the winner and finalists.
The reading fee of $25 includes a 1-year print subscription to The Louisville Review.
Submissions through Submittable only.
Direct questions to managingeditor@louisvillereview.org.
The Louisville Review’s National Poetry Book Contest is made possible by a generous grant from the Snowy Owl Foundation.
This triennial contest will be run every three years.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
• A first book contest open to poets in the U.S. who have not yet published a full-length book of poems.
• Manuscripts should be 48-70 pages in length, excluding front matter/acknowledgements.
• Judge reads all submissions blind.
• Do not put any identifying information or your name on your manuscript. Submittable will add your name to your file.
• List any poems previously published in journals or anthologies on an acknowledgments page at the end of the manuscript. List only the poem's title followed by the year of publication in parentheses. Do not include the title of the journal or anthology.
• Simultaneous submissions of manuscripts under consideration by other publishers are eligible. (Please notify us as soon as possible if your manuscript is accepted by another press.)
POET AND ESSAYIST JEANIE THOMPSON
is the author of The Myth of Water: Poems from the Life of Helen Keller, The Seasons Bear Us, White for Harvest: New and Selected Poems, Witness, Litany for a Vanishing Landscape, How to Enter the River, and Lotus and Psalm. Her poems have been published widely in journals and anthologies for many years. Her essays on poetry and the writing life have also been published in Old Enough: Southern Women Writers and Artists on Creativity and Aging, Tributaries, Creativity and Compassion, Whatever Remembers Us, High Horse, Working the Dirt, All Out of Faith, The Best of Crazyhorse, and The Southern Poetry Anthology: Volume X: Alabama.
While a student in the University of Alabama’s MFA Creative Writing Program, Jeanie led her classmates in founding the Black Warrior Review literary journal. She served as editor in chief for BWR’S first four issues (1974-76).
In 1993 Jeanie founded The Alabama Writers' Forum, a partnership program of the Alabama State Council on the Arts. The Forum promotes writers and writing and is an ardent supporter of literary arts education. Its award-winning Writing Our Stories program for justice-involved youth takes place on several Alabama Department of Youth Services campuses. Jeanie retired as Executive Director Emerita in 2023.
In June 2024, Jeanie received the Albert B. Head Legacy Award for her work as a literary arts advocate and award-winning poet. The Award recognizes public officials, arts patrons, or arts educators who have empowered arts to thrive in their community, creating lasting importance for future generations in Alabama and beyond.
Jeanie has been a poetry faculty member of Spalding University's Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing since 2002.
While a student in the University of Alabama’s MFA Creative Writing Program, Jeanie led her classmates in founding the Black Warrior Review literary journal. She served as editor in chief for BWR’S first four issues (1974-76).
In 1993 Jeanie founded The Alabama Writers' Forum, a partnership program of the Alabama State Council on the Arts. The Forum promotes writers and writing and is an ardent supporter of literary arts education. Its award-winning Writing Our Stories program for justice-involved youth takes place on several Alabama Department of Youth Services campuses. Jeanie retired as Executive Director Emerita in 2023.
In June 2024, Jeanie received the Albert B. Head Legacy Award for her work as a literary arts advocate and award-winning poet. The Award recognizes public officials, arts patrons, or arts educators who have empowered arts to thrive in their community, creating lasting importance for future generations in Alabama and beyond.
Jeanie has been a poetry faculty member of Spalding University's Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing since 2002.
