Calendar
Our contests and offerings for 2025-2026
CURRENTLY OPEN
The Palette Poetry Prize
July 21 - September 21, 2025
As seasons shift and as our team grows and transitions, we at Palette invite you to submit your poetry to our 2025 Palette Poetry Prize! From July 21 to September 21, we are seeking poems that celebrate the community we have by meditating on the role of the poet in this pivotal moment in time. Whether you are an established poet or have just picked up the pen yesterday, we welcome you to join us in this reflection exercise. Send us your most innovative and exciting poetry. Send us poems that are grounding. Send us your truth.
UPCOMING
The Pen Pal Poetry Challenge
September 25 - October 5, 2025
This fall, Palette Poetry invites you to collaborate, converse, share space and vision, and create with fellow poets. For ten days, from September 25 to October 5, we will be open for submissions of collaborative poetry written by two or more people. We hope you rise to the challenge and explore what it’s like to write with others. Through the exchange of words, letters, thoughts, and secrets, consider what can be conjured when poets combine forces.
The Love & Eros Prize
October 6 - December 7, 2025
We’re delighted to bring back the Love & Eros Prize for 2025! Love engulfs us, desire rules us. We encourage love poems beyond the confines of what’s traditionally “romantic.” Rather, we’re seeking unflinching examinations of our sharpest human sensations—those of desire, longing, devotion, and intimacy. All iterations of love are welcome—send us your bitter and your sweet, your queer, platonic, reverent, and devotional.
Winter Keynote Lecture
November 1 - November 30, 2025
A lecture from our Love & Eros Prize guest judge! Registration opens in November. More information coming soon.
The Rejected Poetry Prize
December 8, 2025 - February 8, 2026
More information coming soon.
Chapbook Manuscript Workshop
January 19 - February 22, 2026
More information coming soon.
The Rising Poet Prize
February 9 - April 12, 2026
We're excited to bring back the Rising Poet Prize for 2026! This contest is open to poets who have not yet published a full-length collection at the time of submission. We seeking to celebrate innovative work from emerging poets, so please send us your best poems.
PREVIOUSLY OPEN
Summer Async Studio
July 7 - August 3, 2025
This summer, we invite you to join our Async Studio, a space for poets to receive editorial feedback and mini master class lessons from some of our favorite poets and editors. Explore our growing library of twelve mini lectures on various poetry craft topics from strategic line breaks to revision strategies and more. Our intention is to give you accessible and rewatchable advice to aid you in developing your writing and to demystifying the craft of poetry and the field of publication.
The [FREE] Challenge
June 23 - July 13, 2025
This summer, we invite you to submit your poetry to our 2025 [FREE] Challenge! With everything happening in the world right now, and during a cost-of-living crisis, we at Palette want to offer an accessible space for all poets—a moment to breathe and write without the concern of a financial barrier. From June 23 to July 13, we will be open for submissions without any entry fee. The Palette editors will select one winning poem to receive $500 and publication. Bring us your boldest, most resonant poetry.
The Nature Poetry Prize
April 14 - June 15, 2025
This summer, we invite you to get outside and write some poems! Aimee Nezhukumatathil will judge our inaugural Nature Poetry Prize. Please send us your meditations on the sound of wind, your obsessions with the shape of trees, and your words woven like blades of grass. We are looking forward to reading any and all poems that are interested in the natural world.
The Queer Poetry Prize
February 4 - April 6, 2025
This spring, we encourage poets of all backgrounds to share any poems that meditate on the idea of “queerness.” These poems could explore sexuality, gender, or form. We do not require submitters to identify as LGBTQ+, because we hope to celebrate writers who are learning about themselves through poetry, in addition to those who identify as queer poets. Please send us your experiments in poetic form, meditations on relationships, and inquiries into yourself. This prize will be judged by CAConrad.
The Micro Chapbook Prize
December 1, 2024 - February 2, 2025
We warmly invite you to submit to The 2025 Palette Micro Chapbook Prize! Palette Poetry will select four micro manuscripts to publish in print and digitally, beginning in the fall of 2025. The four winners will each receive $500 and 2025/2026 publication. We hope that you enjoy curating a micro chapbook from your body of work that would best fit one of the four seasonal themes.