Contest

Submissions for the 11th Narrative Poetry Contest are currently closed. Our judge this year was Lauren K. Alleyne. Judge for 2020 will be announced. First prize is $1000 for one poem, second prize is $250 and third prize is $100. The submission fee of $20 goes towards the publication of the journal, contributor mailings, publicity, and the prizes. All winners, finalists and semi-finalists published in the winter/spring 2020 issue of NRR. A list of winners and all finalists/semi-finalists will be posted here and on our Facebook group. 

Lauren K. Alleyne is the author of two collections of poetry, Difficult Fruit (Peepal Tree Press 2014), and Honeyfish (New Issues & Peepal Tree, 2019). Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic, Ms. Muse, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Interviewing the Caribbean, The Crab Orchard Review, among many others. Recent honors for her work include a 2017 Phillip Freund Alumni Prize for Excellence in Publishing (Cornell University), the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Prize, and a Picador Guest Professorship in Literature (University of Leipzig, Germany, 2015). She is currently Assistant Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and an Associate Professor of English at James Madison University. More about her at www.laurenkalleyne.com.
.
CONTEST GUIDELINES:
PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES BELOW.

We accept ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS ONLY through Submittable during the summer submission period, July 1 – Sept. 1. The contest fee of $20 (per 3 poem submission) will be accepted. 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Please submit no more than 3 unpublished NARRATIVE poems of no more than 50 lines per poem in ONE MSWord file (.doc or .docx or .rtf only, no pdf please).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 a copy of the journal.

Multiple submissions 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. All poems will be blind-read. Member CLMP.