Destiny O. Birdsong is a Louisiana-born poet, essayist, and fiction writer who lives and writes in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work has either appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, Catapult, The BreakBeat Poets Presents: Black Girl Magic, and elsewhere. Her critical work recently appeared in African American Review and The Cambridge Companion to Transnational American Literature. Destiny has won the Academy of American Poets Prize, Naugatuck River Review’s 2016 Poetry Contest, Meridian’s 2017 “Borders” Contest in Poetry, and the Richard G. Peterson Poetry Prize from Crab Orchard Review (2019). She has received support from Cave Canem, Callaloo, Jack Jones Literary Arts, Pink Door, MacDowell, The Ragdale Foundation, and Tin House, where she was a 2018 Summer Workshop Scholar. Her debut poetry collection, Negotiations, was published by Tin House Books in October 2020, and was longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Grand Central in 2022. Photo by Hunter Armistead.
PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES BELOW.
We accept ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS ONLY through Submittable during the summer contest submission period, July 1 – Sept. 1, and open (no fee) submissions Jan. 1 – March 1.
During the summer contest, a 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Please submit no more than 3 unpublished NARRATIVE poems of no more than 50 lines per poem (not including stanza breaks) in ONE MSWord file (.doc or .docx or .rtf only, no pdf please).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 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.
