The 2025 Love & Eros Prize
judged by Sun Yung Shin
This contest is open from October 6, 2025 – December 7, 2025.
Palette Poetry’s Love & Eros Prize is returning for its fourth run this fall! From October 6 to December 7, we welcome you to share your love poems that explore the many and varied iterations of love. From the romantic and platonic, to the sweet and queer—the reverential devotion and gut-wrenching longing. What emotions branch from love? How are we all touched by love, and what shape does it manifest as in your life?
This prize will be judged by 신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin, who asks submitters to consider the following prompt:
"Eros is an expansive and mischievous personage—perfect to inspire poems! In the Ancient Greek world, Eros was 'limb-loosening, bittersweet, pain inducing, merciless, sweet-tempered, all abounding, languishing, invincible, irresistible, graceful, tender,' as Eleni Vomvyla of the University College of London's Institute of Archeology writes in an exhibition review for the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens. She also shares that he was perceived by the Greeks 'in all his diversity: a divine figure, a human value and a daily practice.' I am excited to read what Eros inspires in poets for this contest, a word that means to call forth witness. What kinds of eros exists in your life that is calling for witness?
"A fun fact from more recent times is that Eros is also the name of the first near-Earth asteroid, which was discovered in 1898 and is the only asteroid to be orbited by and landed on by a spacecraft. Eros the asteroid is part of the Amor group and orbits the sun every 643 days! To conclude, Eros-as-in-desire exists in so many dimensions of our lives; we are interdependent and bound together by the cosmic forces of gravity, natural forces of evolution, and perhaps divine forces of mystery. I am grateful to have the opportunity to encourage poets to embrace the multi-faceted, mysterious, orbital aspects of Eros."
—Sun Yung Shin
Submissions are open from October 6, 2025 – December 7, 2025. Palette’s editors will choose the ten finalists and any honorable mentions that warrant extra attention. Our judge will then select the winner and runner-ups for publication. The winner will receive $3,000; second and third place will receive $300 and $200, respectively. Finalists may also be considered for publication.
신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin is a Korean-born award-winning poet and writer based in Minneapolis on the Dakotah homeland. She is the author of five collections of poetry: Six Tones of Water co-written with Vi Khi Nao from Ricochet Editions and The Wet Hex and three other books from Coffee House Press. She is the editor of three anthologies of essays and the author of three picture books. Her prose book Heart Eater: A Memoir of Immigration, Belonging, and How We Find Ourselves in Language will be published in May 2026 and her latest picture book Revolutions are Made of Love: The Story of James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs will be released in November 2025. She is also co-adapting a young people's edition of Asian American Histories of the United States by Cathy Ceniza Choy from Beacon Press.
Submission Guidelines: Please read carefully!
- Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English—inclusion of other languages is welcome, as long as the poem is largely written in English. At this time, Palette does not accept translated work unless you are also the author of the original poem.
- Your submission must be no more than three poems and under ten pages. Please submit all your poems in ONE document. Please begin each poem on a new page and include each poem’s individual title.
- We do accept multiple submissions (of one to three poems apiece), but each submission will include the $20 reading fee.
- Writers from historically marginalized groups are invited to submit for free until we reach the fifty free entries budgeted for this particular contest.
- We accept simultaneous submissions—just please send us a note if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere.
- We are only accepting unpublished work. If your poem has been published elsewhere, even on a blog or on social media, it is not eligible.
- DO NOT INCLUDE your name or identifying information in the document OR submission title box.
- Please include a brief cover letter in the cover letter box with your publication history, if any. This text box is where you can include your name and/or bio! If you select the editorial feedback option, this cover letter is also where you can name which poem you’d like feedback on. To safeguard our reading staff, please include content warnings in the cover letter, if applicable, as well.
- Review our FAQ page for frequently asked questions.
- NOTE: If after submitting you notice an error in your submission, please message us rather than withdrawing and resubmitting your submission. We can open it to editing once so you can correct the error.
- Palette Poetry does not accept AI-produced work.
- Contest closes December 7, 2025. Submitters will be notified of their submission status within twelve weeks of the contest closing date.
Discount for Submitters
As a thank you for your support for Palette, we’d like to offer a 10% off discount code on a writing class from The Writing Salon. Find a class and use the code included in the confirmation message at checkout.
Editorial Feedback Option
This option costs $59 and will provide you with two pages of detailed and actionable feedback on a poem of your choice from the submission, including suggestions for future submissions. The three-letter option costs $149 and will provide you with six pages of detailed and actionable feedback on a poem of your choice from the submission, including suggestions for future submissions, from three separate guest editors. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and are all incredibly astute poets.
