Laureate Prize

The 2024 Laureate Prize will be judged by: Kai Coggin! Kai Coggin (she/her) is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Hot Springs and author of five collections, most recently Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024). She is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, a CATALYZE grant fellow from the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the Don Munro Leadership in the Arts Award, the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award, twice named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, and nominated for Arkansas State Poet Laureate and Hot Springs Woman of the Year, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated six times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016, 2018, 2021—awarded in 2022. Ten of Kai’s poems are going to the moon with the Lunar Codex project, and on earth they have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Best of the Net, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, The Night Heron Barks, Bellevue Literary Review, TAB, Pirene’s Fountain, About Place Journal, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Tupelo Press, and elsewhere. Coggin is Editor-at-Large at SWIMM, Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. She lives with her wife and their two dogs in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.

Full length books should be between 50-80 pages. Manuscripts should include a title page, table of contents, and a list of acknowledgments for previously published poems. Books centered around a unifying theme will be given preference.

Individual poems from the manuscript may have been published previously in magazines or chapbooks but not full length books. The collection as a whole must be unpublished.

Simultaneous submissions are permitted. Please let us know immediately if your manuscript is accepted by another publisher while under our consideration. We do not accept translations.

We encourage submissions from traditionally marginalized writers. Women, people of color, members of the LGBT community, and people with disabilities are especially encouraged to submit. Current students, former students, former classmates, or friends of Small Harbor Publishing, Harbor Editions, Harbor Review staff, or the judge are disqualified from entering the contest.

All entries will be read by Harbor Editions staff. A selection of finalists will be read by the judge.

The submission fee is $25 to cover submission management. All fees are waived for BIPOC identifying writers.

Include in your cover letter your name, contact information, and a brief bio. Attach your manuscript as a word or pdf attachment. Please use the title of your book as your document name. Do not include your name or identifying information on your manuscript.

Harbor Editions will publish 1 book from the contest. Finalists may be considered for publication. The winner will receive $500 and 20 copies of their book. You should hear a response within 6 months of the submission period closing date.