The No Chair Press Chapbook Contest Sponsored by No Chair Press
CONTEST CANCELED for 2019 Please don't send entries.
No Chair Press: a chapbook press publishing traditional formal poetry by contemporary women poets
First prize: $100 and 25 copies of selected chapbook DUE TO A DEATH IN MY FAMILY, THE CHAPBOOK CONTEST IS SUSPENDED for 2019. All entry fees will be refunded.
For this contest, No Chair Press is seeking manuscripts of rhymed and metered verse, given a contemporary spin by today’s women poets.
The majority of the poems in submitted manuscripts should be engaging formal techniques. Sonnet sequences very welcome, as are rhymed verse plays. A manuscript entirely of free verse poems is not a good fit for this particular contest and press, but a few free verse poems in an manuscript that predominately has formal poems (sonnets, villanelles, rondeaus, etc) will not eliminate that manuscript.
No Chair Press, founded in 2017, has published chapbooks by Elisabeth Meyer, Elise Hempel, and Jenny Benjamin, and Anna M. Evans. Chapbooks are forthcoming from Emily Williamson, Caitlin Scott, and Liz Ahl.
Guidelines: 1. Manuscripts should be 24-28 pages. No more than two manuscripts entries per poet, please. 2. ONE winner will be selected for publication by No Chair Press. The first prize winner will receive $100 and 25 copies of her chapbook. Additional manuscripts may be offered publication. 3. Submit your manuscript(s) from contest canceled for 2019. 4. There is an $8.00 reading fee per manuscript ($10 if you wish to receive a copy of a No Chair Press book). Pay entry fee at https://www.paypal.me/NoChairPress. Email a copy of your receipt to [email protected] to confirm payment of entry fee. 5. Results of the contest will be posted at No Chair Press’s website at the end of December 2019. Book publication will occur in February 2020. 7. For more information about No Chair Press, visit our website: http://www.nochairpress.com/ 8. Contest will be judged by Allison Joseph, founder and publisher of No Chair Press, who requests that her current or former students, former classmates, and close friends do not enter this contest. 9. If you have questions prior to entering, send them to [email protected]. 10. Individual poems in submitted collections may have seen prior publication, but the collection as a whole should not be previously published.
CONTEST RESULTS 2017: I received many wonderful manuscripts for the first (and hopefully annual) No Chair Press Chapbook Contest. I am very pleased to announce my two choices for publication.
First place ($300 and publication) goes to Elise Hempel for her manuscript “Girl in the Clock.” ELISE HEMPEL grew up in suburban Chicago and has worked as an editor, proofreader, copywriter and university English instructor. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, Measure, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Evansville Review, Southern Poetry Review, and The Midwest Quarterly, as well as in Poetry Daily and Ted Kooser's weekly column, American Life in Poetry. She is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award and the winner of the 2015 Able Muse Write Prize in Poetry and the 2016 String Poet Prize and has been a finalist or semi-finalist for several book awards. Her first chapbook, Only Child, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2014, and in 2016 Able Muse Press published her first full-length collection of poems, Second Rain. She lives in central Illinois.
Second place ($100 and publication) goes to Jenny Benjamin for her manuscript “Midway.” JENNY BENJAMIN is the owner of her freelance writing business JB Communications, LLC. Over thirty of her poems have appeared in journals, including DIAGRAM, South Carolina Review, Fulcrum, Baltimore Review, Chelsea, and Crab Orchard Review. Her first novel, This Most Amazing, was published in 2013 by Armida Books in Nicosia, Cyprus. Her poetry chapbook, More Than a Box of Crayons, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her three daughters and dog.
Please join me in congratulating these poets. Both chapbooks were published in April 2018.
Allison Joseph, Publisher and Founder NO CHAIR PRESS www.nochairpress.com