Naugatuck River Review is delighted and honored to announce the judge for our 16th annual narrative poetry contest will be Allison Joseph. Contest submissions will be open July 1 through Sept. 1, 2024.

Allison Joseph lives in Carbondale, Illinois, where she is on the faculty at Southern Illinois University. Her most recent collections of poems are Lexicon (Red Hen Press, 2021, PBTS Best Book Award winner), Any Proper Weave (Kelsay Books, 2022), Speak and Spell (Glass Lyre Press, 2022), and Confessions of a Barefaced Woman (Red Hen Press, 2018). Confessions of a Barefaced Woman won the 2019 Feathered Quill Book Award and was a finalist for the 2019 NAACP Image Award. She was named Illinois Author of the Year for 2022 by the Illinois Association of Teachers of English. Her poems have appeared in the New York Times and in the Best American Poetry Series. She is the widow of beloved poet and editor Jon Tribble.

Naugatuck River Review is temporarily closed for submissions. The 16th annual narrative poetry contest submissions will be open July 1, 2024 through September 1, 2024. There is a contest submission fee of $20 that covers the journal expenses for a year (both issues). Thank you for your support of narrative poetry.

GUIDELINES:
PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES BELOW.

We accept ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS ONLY through Submittable during the summer contest submission period, July 1 – Sept. 1, and the open (no fee) submissions Jan. 1 – Feb. 1.

During the contest submissions, a fee of $20 (per 3 poem submission) will be required. Unpaid submissions will be disqualified. Emailed submissions and mailed submissions will not be considered.

Please submit no more than 3 unpublished NARRATIVE poems of no more than 50 lines per poem (not including stanza breaks) in ONE MSWord file (.doc or .docx or .rtf only, no pdf please). Please remove your name from your word file, as the poetry is read blind by our editorial staff and contest judge. We know it is yours by your Submittable profile. Questions ONLY: Feel free to email us at naugatuckriver@aol.com.

All poems will be considered for publication. Winners (3) will receive prize money and all finalists and semi-finalists will be rewarded with publication and a copy of the journal.

Multiple submissions (submitting more than one time) are discouraged, but simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you inform us in a timely manner if your work is published elsewhere. We claim First North American Publication Rights, so rights revert to the author after the initial publication period, just please give us credit.  We will only consider work that has not been previously published. Original work in English only. All poems will be blind-read. Member CLMP.

WHAT IS NARRATIVE POETRY?
We get this question quite often. What NRR is looking for are poems that tell a story, or have a strong sense of story. They can be stories of a moment or an experience, and can be personal or historical. A good narrative poem that would work for our journal has a compressed narrative, and we prefer poems that take up two pages or less of the journal (50 lines max). We are looking above all for poems that are well-crafted, have an excellent lyric quality and contain a strong emotional core. Any style of poem is considered, including prose poems. Poems with very long lines don’t fit well in the format. Hope this helps.

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Council of Literary Magazines and Presses Contests Code of Ethics

CLMP’s community of independent literary publishers believes that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. We believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, we agree to 1) conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors; 2) to provide clear and specific contest guidelines—defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and 3) to make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public. This Code recognizes that different contest models produce different results, but that each model can be run ethically. We have adopted this Code to reinforce our integrity and dedication as a publishing community and to ensure that our contests contribute to a vibrant literary heritage.