Submission Guidelines
Current Poetry Contest
2025 Myths & Fables Prize
July 1, 2025 to September 7, 2025
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:
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Submissions are open to all poets, regardless of publication history.
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Send us only your best, polished work—unpublished poems only, please.
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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.
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Please do not include any identifying information in the body of your document.
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We accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere.
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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.
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Each entry requires a submission fee of $20.
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Multiple submissions (of up to three poems apiece) are allowed, but each requires a separate entry fee.
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Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history and personal bio. Also include any content warnings in consideration of our reading staff.
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Work generated by AI will be automatically disqualified.
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Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing primarily in English. Some code-switching/meshing is very welcome.
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Please do not submit work if you have a close relationship with the guest judge.
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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.
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The deadline is September 7th, 2025. We plan to announce winners and finalists in Fall 2025.
Editorial Feedback Option:
New Voices
Always open. Always free.
We are thrilled to offer significant payment to our partner poets: $50 per poem.
We warmly invite poets from historically under-represented and marginalized groups to submit. Our aim is to be an accurate representation of the diversity of our community. Your voice is valued here.
Guidelines
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- Submissions are open to new and emerging poets only (no more than one full-length published work of poetry out in the world or forthcoming at the time of submission. For information about self-published works and pieces published via personal or social media pages, please see our FAQ page below).
- We accept simultaneous submissions—just please send us a note if your work is picked up elsewhere (we want to say congrats)!
- All submissions must be no more than ten pages and no more than five poems.
- We do not accept multiple submissions. Please submit all your poems in ONE document.
- Please include a cover letter with your publication history.
- Expect eight to twelve weeks for a response.
- To view a list of our most commonly asked questions regarding submitting to us, please see our FAQ page.
Submission Options
- New Voices Free – Always a free way to submit and we always pay for the work. We pay new poets $50 per poem selected. Response time is eight to twelve weeks.
- New Voices Editorial Letter – If you’re interested in knowing a little bit more about what we thought of your poem, utilize this option. When we’ve reviewed your piece we will include one to two pages of feedback on your poem including suggestions for revision, where it might be a good fit for publication, and other comments about ways it can be improved. It’s our way of helping you to understand your work better and improve. Our editors are paid a significant portion of the fee.
- New Voices Fast Response – It can be hard to wait to hear back, so we've developed a quicker turnaround time for writers who want to hear back within two weeks. There is a reading fee for this category.
- New Voices Free Fast Response for BIPOC – Our quick turnaround option offered for free to Black, Indigenous, and other writers of color.
Unless specifically requested, we do not accept AI-generated work.
Author's Rights
Frontier Poetry holds first publication rights for three months after publication, after which rights revert to the author. Authors agree not to publish, nor authorize or permit the publication of, any part of the material for three months following first publication. For reprints, we ask for acknowledgment of publication in Frontier Poetry first.
