2025 Myths & Fables Prize

July 1 to September 7, 2025

In our continued celebration of imagination, storytelling, and the power of archetype, Frontier Poetry is thrilled to announce the Myths & Fables Prize. In her poem “Circe’s Power,” Louise Glück invokes the voice of the sorceress: “I never turned anyone into a pig. / Some people are pigs; I make them / look like pigs.” With chilling clarity, she peels back the veil of fantasy to reveal something deeply human—desire, illusion, transformation. These ancient tales, passed down through firelight and ink, still echo in our modern hearts.

We invite you to lend your voice to this lineage. The 2025 Myths & Fables Prize seeks poems that engage in mythological figures, cultural lore, personal legends, and reimagined fairytales. Whether you're unearthing stories from your heritages, wrestling with gods and monsters, or crafting your own fables from the smoke of memory—send us work that is fearless, lyrical, and rich in poetic craft. We welcome traditional retellings and radical departures. Invented myths, fractured fairy tales, elegies for forgotten heroes, or whispered epics—let your poetry become the spell.

Frontier Poetry warmly encourages submission from poets of all identities, cultural backgrounds, and traditions. We are especially interested in work that explores underrepresented mythologies and stories not often given space in the Western literary canon.

Guest judge Jennifer Chang will select the winners. The first-place winner will receive $3000 and publication. The second- and third-place winners will receive $300 and $200, respectively, along with publication. All finalists will be considered for paid publication in New Voices.

Let the myths arise.

This contest opens July 1 to September 7, 2025

Further reading can be found here:

About the Guest Judge:

Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity, Some Say the Lark, and An Authentic Life, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Her other honors include the William Carlos Williams Award, the Levinson Prize from Poetry, and fellowships to the Elizabeth Murray Artists Residency, MacDowell, and Yaddo. She teaches at the University of Texas in Austin and is the poetry editor of New England Review.

What Chang Is Looking For:

"I admire most the poems that invite me to feel and think something new. Startling, yet precise language moves me. Whatever expands my imagination, suddenly alters the weather (emotional, meteorological), stops time, and/or brings me closer to a truth, I welcome. I am open to and curious about all aesthetics. I love the sentence and I love the line and I love when the two are in collusion. Poems are composed of fragments, and it is the poem that invokes what’s been left out or lost that can break me open in the best, most devastating way."

Guidelines:

Submissions are open to all poets, regardless of publication history.
Send us only your best, polished work—unpublished poems only, please.
As part of our dedication to the pursuit of a more inclusive publishing world, we are offering a free submission window for poets from historically marginalized groups at the beginning of the contest until we reach our cap of fifty.
Please do not include any identifying information in the body of your document.
We accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere.
We ask for no more than three poems (five pages) per submission. Please submit all your poems in ONE document. We have no particular aesthetic or formal requirements and consider all styles of poetry.
Each entry requires a submission fee of $20.
Multiple submissions (of up to three poems apiece) are allowed, but each requires a separate entry fee.
Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history and personal bio. Also include any content warnings in consideration of our reading staff.
Work generated by AI will be automatically disqualified.
Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing primarily in English. Some code-switching/meshing is very welcome.
Please do not submit work if you have a close relationship with the guest judge.
If you have any questions, please visit our FAQ page. If you don’t find the answer to your question, email us: contact (at ) frontierpoetry (dot) com.
The deadline is September 7th, 2025. We plan to announce winners and finalists in Fall 2025.

Editorial Feedback Option:

This option costs $59 and will provide you with two pages of detailed and actionable feedback on your submission, including suggestions for future submissions. The $149 option will provide you with three letters from three different editors. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and all are astute and professional poets. Please allow eight to ten weeks after the contest closes to receive your feedback.

Note on What We Look For

We do not hold preference for any particular style or topic—we simply seek the best poems we can find. Send us work that is blister, that is color, that strikes hot the urge to live and be. For a sense of what we are looking for, read through our previously published poems or What We Look For. We warmly and sincerely invite all voices, and especially those that have been historically marginalized and silenced to submit work.

We also encourage you to submit your poetry for free to our New Voices, open year-round. We pay our emerging NV poets $50 per poem, published every Friday. New Voices is the beating heart of Frontier, and we hope to read your work soon. Thank you so much for supporting the community of new and emerging poets.