Submissions for the 2024 Airlie Prize Are Closed


Submissions for the Airlie Prize are open annually, January 1 through March 1, to all poets writing in English, regardless of place of residence. The winner will be notified at the end of the summer following the submission and will receive a $1,000 cash award upon publication of the book.

At Airlie Press, our vision and mission are to publish books of poetry that are compelling, innovative, and representative of diverse voices. As a press, we commit to participating in the ongoing conversation and practice regarding inclusion and equity. We encourage submissions from underrepresented voices and poets from marginalized communities.

In the interest of transparency, we’d like to share our selection process. In the first round, all manuscripts will be evaluated anonymously by two readers. Readers may include Airlie Press editors (either past or present), previous Airlie Prize winners, and guest readers invited by the current editorial board. Each reader will choose two manuscripts to advance to the second round. All current editors will then read the manuscripts that have advanced to the second round, and each will choose their top two selections. Identities of the finalists are revealed to the editors at that point. From that group of finalists, the prize winner is chosen by consensus among all current editors, and the winner is announced in August. If you have submitted to the Airlie Prize before, we encourage you to try again, as the judging team of Airlie Press editors varies from year to year.

Members of the Airlie advisory board are ineligible to enter this contest. In the case that an entry to the contest is made by a close connection (friend, relative, student, or former student) of one of the Airlie Prize readers, and that reader recognizes the anonymous manuscript, that reader will recuse themselves from the review of that manuscript in the first round. Manuscripts that advance to the final round will be read by all current editors, regardless of connection, and a winner will be chosen by consensus. For the purposes of this contest, we also define “close connection” as anyone with whom a reader has direct correspondence (either written or verbal) once a month or more. As poetry is a relatively small community, we believe a passing acquaintance with one of the readers does not necessitate a recusal.

Submissions are accepted via Submittable during the submission period. Entry fee: $25 ($33 if you would like to receive a copy of the winning book; $38 for those residing outside the US wishing to receive the book).

Manuscript Guidelines:

  • Manuscripts should be 48 to 90 pages of original poetry in English (excluding front matter and end matter). No more than one poem should appear on a page. The author’s name should not appear anywhere in the manuscript.

  • Please be sure manuscript pages are numbered.

  • Please include a table of contents.

  • Please use a standard, easy-to-read font such as Times New Roman in twelve-point size.

  • Poems included in the submission may have appeared previously in magazines or anthologies but may not have been previously published in a book-length collection of the author’s own work.

  • Authors may submit more than one manuscript as long as no material is duplicated between submissions. Each submission requires a separate entry fee.

  • This contest is limited to single-author submissions. Translations are not eligible.

  • We accept simultaneous submissions, but ask that you notify us and withdraw your manuscript from Submittable if it is accepted by another publisher. Entry fees are nonrefundable.

  • The contest winner will participate in the judging for the Airlie Prize in the year following their book’s publication.

Results of the 2023 Airlie Prize


The winner of the 2023 Airlie Prize is All Empires Must, by Mia Kang.

Thanks to everyone who submitted a manuscript to this year’s contest for trusting us with your work. We hope you’ll join us in congratulating the winner and all of our finalists.

Winner
All Empires Must, by Mia Kang

Finalists
Shapeshifter, by Shannon Austin
Murk, by Lauren Mallett
Somewhere Un/celled, by Leah White
Anchor to a Floating City, by Gretchen Steele Pratt
Praise Song for Adverse Conditions, by Violetta Garcia-Mendoza

Semifinalists
All These Beautiful Bodies, by Bridget Bell
Informal Proofs of Separation, by Ethan Heusser
Essential Black, by John Minczeski
How to Disappear in America, by Michelle Franke
The Curve of the Earth, by Freya Rohn
The Transmutation Notebook, by Michael Lavers
The Immortality Box, by John Blair
The Singing River, by Benjamin Morris
The Real Ethereal, by Katie Naughton
PERISH/ABOLISH, by Mia Kang
Neither Are Crows, by Terry Bodine
Half Moon Rising, by Daniela Sow
lightsome, by Fay Dillof
Driveway, by Therese Carr
Fiber, by Dana Sonnenschein
purl, by Michele Evans

ABOUT THE WINNER

Image of Mia Kang

Mia Kang is a a Philadelphia-based writer, art historian, and cultural worker. In 2022-2023, she is an inaugural iLAB Artist in Residence at University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Her pamphlet City Poems was published by ignitionpress in 2020, and her writing has appeared in journals including POETRY, Poetry Northwest, Washington Square Review, wildness, and PEN America. She was named the 2017 winner of Boston Review’s Annual Poetry Contest, and she was a 2019 finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. She has received awards and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Brooklyn Poets, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She teaches as an Adjunct Lecturer at Hunter College, CUNY, her alma mater, and she is currently completing a PhD in the history of art at Yale University.