Writing Competition: 2025 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize

Deadline: June 30th, 2025!

Bauhan Publishing is accepting submissions for the 2025 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize.

PLEASE READ ALL DIRECTIONS!!! PLEASE, PLEASE DO THIS!

• With the success of our first thirteen contests, we are pleased to accept submissions for our next prize—in our fourteenth year! We hope you will join one of these previous winners: Rebecca Givens Rolland for her collection The Wreck of Birds (2012), Nils Michal for his collection, Come Down to Earth (2013), David Koehn for his collection, Twine (April 2014), Deborah Gorlin for her collection Life of the Garment (April 2015), Desirée Alvarez for her collection, Devil's Paintbrush (March 2016), Zeina Hashem Beck for her collection Louder Than Hearts (Spring 2017), Jen Town for her collection All The Light We Cannot See (Spring 2018), Marilee Richards for her collection The Double Zero (Spring 2019), Dorsey Craft for her collection, Plunder (Spring 2020), Alexa Doran for her collection, DM Me, Mother Darling (Spring 2021), Richard Smith for his collection, Not a Soul But Us (Spring 2022), Catherine Arnold for her collection Receipt For Lost Words (Spring 2023) and Heather Treseler for Auguries & Divinations (Spring 2024).

• The winner receives $1000, book publication, and 50 copies of the published book, as well as distribution with our other spring titles through our distributor (Casemate IPM).

• We are pleased to announce this year's judge is poet, Anthony Walton, author of The End of Respectability. He is currently writer-in-residence at Bowdoin College, teaching writing and poetry. The New Yorker published "Dead Reckoning" in July, 2024

• We do not pre-screen; all manuscripts go to the judge.

• Below are the submission guidelines—if you have any questions, please email us with "May Sarton Prize" in the subject line.

• Multiples entries are accepted for $30 per entry.

• PLEASE NOTE: If you need to EDIT your manuscript, please ask us to "OPEN FOR EDITING" by sending a message through Submittable or an email to contest@bauhanpublishing.com. There is no reason to "withdraw" your manuscript or you will have to pay another $30 to submit it again.

Also Please note: this contest is NOT restricted to NH poets! It is open to submissions WORLDWIDE. "New Hampshire" in the title just differentiates it from another May Sarton contest.

Submission guidelines:

1. TITLE PAGE WITH NO NAME

2. Please, NO ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, biographical material, or dedication pages in the manuscript - or in the file name. We will gather your name and contact information through your Submittable account. The manuscripts uploaded must be without identifying information for a blind judging.

3. Manuscripts must be typed and paginated. We are looking for collections that are roughly 50 to 80 pages in length, as a PDF or Word Doc.

4.. Translations and self-published books are not eligible. The manuscript must be the product of only one author.

5. Any person who has studied poetry in a formal program with this year's judge through a college, university, community program, residency, or private tutorial within the last two years is not eligible to submit a manuscript to this contest.

6. No illustrations, photographs or images should be included.

7. The actual manuscript should include ONLY the following: TITLE PAGE (with no name), TABLE OF CONTENTS, POEMS.

8. The winner will be announced by September 2025 publicly via press release, social media, and our website at Bauhan Publishing. We will notify the winner and finalists prior to the announcement, as well as email all contestants through Submittable and eblast before publishing the results. Please ensure that you can receive email from bauhanpublishing.com and Submittable.

9. Bauhan Publishing reserves the right to cancel the contest for any reason. In that unlikely event, all entry fees will be returned to contestants.

10. If you need to edit your manuscript or change anything before the deadline, please go to your submission and ask us to open it for editing (or email us, and we will open it for you.) There is no need to withdraw your manuscript and then pay to re-submit.

11. GOOD LUCK!

Please contact us at:

contest@bauhanpublishing.com 

with any questions.

Submit your entry here.