The Headlight Review Poetry Chapbook Prize
The winner of The Headlight Review’s 2025 Poetry Chapbook Prize Contest will receive publication (a perfect bound book with a full color or black/white cover), an award of $500, and 25 copies of the book.
Submissions will be open from October 1st to December 31st, 2024.
A list of finalists will be announced sixty days after the close of submissions. All manuscripts will be judged blindly.
The finalists who make it through the first round will be judged by esteemed poet Olatunde Osinaike. Originally from the West Side of Chicago, Olatunde Osinaike is a Nigerian-American poet, essayist, and software developer. Selected in 2024 as the Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry, he is the author of Tender Headed (Akashic Books), winner of the 2022 National Poetry Series, shortlisted for the Society of Midland Authors Award in Poetry and Nossrat Yassini Poetry Prize. He is also author of the limited edition chapbooks Speech Therapy (TAR) and The New Knew (Thirty West). Other honors include winner of the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize and Frontier Industry Prize, semifinalist for the Discovery Poetry Prize, and honorable mention for the Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Award in Poetry. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Literary Hub, The Slowdown, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best New Poets, 20.35 Africa, New Poetry from the Midwest, Obsidian, Wildness, and elsewhere. He lives in Atlanta and would like to thank you.
The winning manuscript will be published within six months after the results of the competition are announced in April of 2025. Each judge’s favorite poem from their selected finalist will be highlighted at The Headlight Review.
Guidelines:
Eligibility: Employees and students at Kennesaw State University, both former and current, are not eligible to enter. Entrants must be at least 18 years of age or older.
Electronic submissions: The $18 entry fee is payable by debit/credit card via the KSU submission system, which you may find at the “Submit Your Manuscript” button at the bottom of this page.
Manuscript submission details:
- Size: Manuscripts must be between 24-36 pages, including cover page, table of contents and any acknowledgements.
- Format: 12 pt. standard typeface, PDF only.
- Title page: Should include the title of the manuscript and nothing else. No. identifying name or address is permitted in the manuscript.
- Poems: Poems that have been published elsewhere must be acknowledged. Overall, the manuscript should be original and previously unpublished.
- Multiple submissions: Are acceptable. Each submission requires a separate entry fee.
- Simultaneous submissions: Are acceptable. Please inform us immediately upon acceptance elsewhere. Entry fees are nonrefundable.
- Language: Entries must be written in the English language.
- Illustrations: Are discouraged.
- Translations: Are ineligible.
- Comments: Will not be provided to non-winning entrants.
- Editing: Will not be permitted once submitted.
Kennesaw State’s MA in Professional Writing Program (MAPW) endorses and abides by the Ethical Guidelines of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP). Our system for judging is transparent and blind. The first-round judges will receive and rate their choices in order, and this will create a list of finalists. The manuscript finalists will go to the finalist judge, who will then select the best among the finalists.