Ghost Peach Press

The 2020 Ghost Peach Press Prize

This contest for a first or second full-length poetry collection is open to any poet writing in English who has not yet published more than one full-length book in poetry (poets with multiple chapbooks are eligible), and offers a cash prize of $1,000 and publication, as well as ten free copies of the published book. This contest is closed. Check back for information about the 2022 contest.

The brilliant Chen Chen will judge the contest.

Chen Chen is the author of *When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities* (BOA Editions, 2017), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. Bloodaxe Books published the UK edition in 2019. He has also written four chapbooks, most recently *GESUNDHEIT!*, a collaboration with Sam Herschel Wein and out from Glass Poetry Press. With Sam, he runs the journal *Underblong*. His work appears in many publications, including *Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day,* and *The Best American Poetry* (2015 & 2019). He has received a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from Kundiman and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches at Brandeis University as the Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence.

Entries will first be read blind by GPP and Birdcoat’s panel of editors, and 2021 judge Chen Chen will choose the winning collection from ten finalists. All manuscripts should include a title page, table of contents, and an acknowledgements page (if applicable). No identifying information should be included in the submission. Manuscripts should be paginated and formatted in a pleasant-to-read font (as in, not comic sans), with no more than one poem per page. Manuscripts should consist of 48 – 75 pages of poetry (not including front and back matter). We prefer that you are ethical and do not submit if you are related to/work with/are besties with or otherwise have personal connections to the judge which could cause your work to be recognized.

Ghost Peach Press accepts the $22 entry fee exclusively through our Submittable page. The entry fee is due at the time of submission. This contest runs from January 1st, 2021 – May 1st, 2021. The winner will be announced by November 2021 and publication is expected in the fall of 2022.

Past winners include: Laura Page, Dove and Coyote (available here), and Mirande Bissell, Stalin at the Opera (forthcoming 2021).

The 2020 Ghost Peach Press Prize in Poetry

Mirande Bissell, Stalin at the Opera

This manuscript was selected by Diane Seuss, who called it “painful, original, magnificent.”

2020 Finalists:

Shuang Ang

Danielle Blau

Marion Brown

Michael Cryer

Suzanne Edison

Andie Francis

Darren Higgins

Leah Claire Kaminski

Sara Moore Wagner