Iowa Review Awards

The Iowa Review Awards accepts submissions during the month of January. Judges for the 2017 Awards are Joyelle McSweeney (poetry), Amelia Gray (fiction), and Charles D’Ambrosio (nonfiction).

Founded in 1970 and edited by faculty, students, and staff from the renowned writing and literature programs at the University of Iowa, The Iowa Review takes advantage of this rich environment for literary collaboration to create a worldwide conversation among those who read and write contemporary literature.

They publish a wide range of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, translations, photography, and work in emerging forms by both established and emerging writers. Work from their pages has been consistently selected to appear in the anthologies Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.

The Iowa Review publishes three issues per year (in April, August, and December) in both print and digital formats. (Subscribe here!)

About the Contest

Each January since 2003, The Iowa Review has invited submissions to The Iowa Review Awards, a writing contest in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Winners receive $1,500; first runners-up receive $750. Winners and runners-up are published in each December issue.

Contest Rules

Submit up to 25 pages of prose (double-spaced) or 10 pages of poetry (one poem or several, but no more than one poem per page). Work must be previously unpublished. Simultaneous submissions are fine assuming you inform us of acceptance elsewhere.

To submit, visit iowareview.submittable.com during the month of January and follow these instructions:

• Select the appropriate genre category. If you’d like to purchase a discounted yearlong subscription to The Iowa Review for $10, please choose a genre marked “(subscription).” Otherwise, choose “(no subscription).”
• Include a cover letter listing your name, address, e-mail address and/or telephone number, and the title of each submitted work. (Please use the “Cover Letter” form field in Submittable; do not include the cover letter as part of your uploaded document.)
• Do not include your name on the manuscript itself.
• Upload your entry. Multiple poems or prose pieces can comprise a single entry if the total number of pages does not exceed 25 for prose or 10 for poetry. For instance, you may submit two short stories of ten pages each as a single entry; the stories would be read and judged separately. But please do not mix genres: a ten-page story and a two-page poem constitute separate entries.
• Pay the $20 entry fee using Paypal, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover.
• If you submit more than one entry, even within the same genre, you must submit the $20 entry fee with each entry.
• Submit between January 1 and January 31.

Judges will select winners from a group of finalists chosen by Iowa Review editors. All manuscripts, whether selected as finalists or not, are considered for publication.