Writing Competition: The Orison Chapbook Prize

Each year from April 1 – July 1 we accept submissions of chapbook manuscripts (20 – 45 pp.) in any genre (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, or hybrid) for The Orison Chapbook Prize, judged by Orison Books founder and editor, Luke Hankins.

The winner will be awarded publication, a $300 cash prize, and 20 copies of the chapbook, in addition to a standard royalties contract.

Deadline: July 1, 2023

Entry Fee: $15.00

Current or former students of the judge, or anyone with a close personal relationship with the judge, are not eligible to submit. In the event that the judge does not select a winner, all entry fees will be refunded to the entrants. All finalist manuscripts will be considered for publication under a standard royalties contract.

About the Judge:

Luke Hankins is the founder and editor of Orison Books. He is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Radiant Obstacles and Weak Devotions; a poetry chapbook, Testament; an essay collection, The Work of Creation; and a volume of translations from the French of Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, A Cry in the Snow & Other Poems. Hankins is a graduate of the Indiana University MFA program, where he held the Yusef Komunyakaa Fellowship in Poetry. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in numerous publications, including 32 Poems, American Literary Review, The Collagist, Image, Linebreak, New England Review, New Poetry in Translation, Pleiades, Poetry International, Verse, West Branch, World Literature Today, and The Writer’s Chronicle, as well as on the American Public Media radio program “On Being.”

Orison Books seeks to publish spiritually-engaged poetry, fiction, and nonfiction of exceptional literary merit. In our view, spiritual writing has little to do with subject matter. Rather, the kind of work we seek to publish has a transcendent aesthetic effect on the reader, and reading it can itself be a spiritual experience. Such work is not merely about spiritual contemplation, but itself leads the reader into profound contemplation. It is not merely about the sublime, but itself has a sublime effect on the reader. It is not merely about the mystery of being, but itself heightens the reader’s sense of the mystery underlying the fabric of our daily lives.

The poet Gjertrude Schnackenberg, in an interview with Jonathan Galassi, articulated a perspective on literature that resonates with our mission, and her words are worth sharing: “When I said that poetry tries and wants to make contact with reality, that is, with uttermost-being (truth, God, whatness, somethingness-nothingness, chaos-order)—to the Veda seers, the vibrating void; to the eighth-century Chinese poets, that-which-is-self-engendering; to mathematicians, a veil of numbers; to the Jewish mystics, the En-Sof; to Christian mystics, the indwelling of God and emanation of Christ in all things; to the animal kingdoms on earth, the starry night; to contemporary physicists, the excitation of superstrings; to cosmologists, the residue of an explosion of something to whose pre-explosion existence there is perhaps, as my friend Elaine Scarry once said to me, ‘no door’—I am referring very specifically and particularly to the material we are made from, this animated-in-us matter which we, in turn, express such a passionate drive to know (and which, in turn, has evolved a way to be known, through us, and is the source and object of our wonder and compulsion).”

Orison Books seeks to be broad, inclusive, and open to perspectives spanning the spectrums of spiritual and religious thought, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

Orison Books titles have been reviewed or featured in The New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, Poets & Writers, Foreword Reviews, Booklist, The Jewish Review of Books, The Chicago Tribune, The Millions, The Rumpus, The Washington Independent Review of Books, Poetry Daily, Pleiades, River Teeth, Beloit Poetry Journal, and many other places. Poems from our books have twice been featured in The New York Times Magazine, and our books have won the Chicago Review of Books' CHIRBy Award, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award, and the Texas Institute of Letters’ Bob Bush Memorial Award, and also have been named finalists for The Kate Tufts Discovery Award, The National Jewish Book Award, The Balcones Fiction Prize, The New Mexico Book Award, and The Paterson Poetry Prize.

We do not consider self-help, how-to, or “inspirational” manuscripts.

Self-published manuscripts are considered previously published and are not eligible for submission in any category. 

Orison Books is committed to running ethical and transparent contests. Current or former students of a judge, or anyone with a close personal relationship with that judge, are not eligible to submit in the category in question. Judges also never see author names until after they have made their selections. Orison Books also undertakes never to extend contest deadlines, except in the case of technical problems or other events that would prevent submitters from entering the contest by the original deadline.

​We release all titles in print, and fiction and select nonfiction titles in both print and e-book formats. When possible, we offer a small advance on royalties for all books accepted for publication through our open submission periods, and a cash prize as well as a standard royalties contract for manuscripts selected as contest winners.

Enter here.