The Anzaldúa Poetry Prize

Open: Closed—share your writing with us next year!
Deadline: TBA
Guest Judge: TBA
Award: First place is publication, $1,500 prize, 25 contributor copies, and royalties contract. Three finalists will be announced.
Reading Fee: $15
Enter: Closed—share your writing with us next year!

History

Our annual poetry prize proudly honors poet, writer, and cultural theorist, Gloria E. Anzaldúa. Anzaldúa’s work highlights how one’s being in the world is at once geographical, geopolitical, psychological, mythological, spiritual, and linguistic. She is well known for her book of prose and poetry, “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza,” which draws on her experience as a Chicana/Tejana/lesbian/feminist activist—a revolutionary and inspirational work that continues to be so.

The Gloria E. Anzaldúa Poetry Prize is awarded annually to a poet whose work explores how place shapes identity, imagination, and understanding. Special attention is given to poems that exhibit multiple vectors of thinking: artistic, theoretical, and social, which is to say, political.

Why am I compelled to write? Because the writing saves me from this complacency I fear. …Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and hunger. I write to record what others erase when I speak, to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you. To become more intimate with myself and you. …To dispel the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of shit. …Finally I write because I’m scared of writing, but I’m more scared of not writing.
              —Gloria E. Anzaldúa, “Speaking in Tongues”

Guidelines

• Send 15 to 30 pages of poetry. Please include no more than one poem per page.
• Simultaneous submissions and previously published poems are acceptable.
• All entries must be sent online via our submission manager and be contained in a single document.
• A non-refundable $15 reading fee must accompany your work. If our reading fee is prohibitive, email editor [at] newfound [dot] org for a manuscript fee waiver. We can offer a few a year.
• Students (past and present), relatives, and close friends of the judge are ineligible.

Closed—share your writing with us next year!

Deadline

The deadline is September 15th, 2023, 12 a.m., Central daylight time.

Prize

• The winner will receive a prize of $1,500 plus 25 copies of the published manuscript. The author will have the opportunity to purchase additional copies at a discount.
• The author will receive a royalties contract (25% print/50% digital) to sell the chapbook with Newfound.
• Newfound will design, print, and bind the chapbook. The cover will be decided in cooperation with the winning author.
• All finalists will be announced in December on the Newfound blog and social media channels.
• All poems submitted for the award will be considered for publication in Newfound.
• Due to the number of submissions, we cannot leave each manuscript personalized feedback. Authors will receive acknowledgment of receipt and panel decision. Check here for notification of the winner.

Judge

Natalie Diaz is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She is the author of When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press, 2012) and Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf, 2020). A MacArthur Fellow, Lannan Literary Fellow, Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow, and United States Artists Ford Fellow, Diaz is Director of the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands and the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University. 

Closed—share your writing with us next year!

Panelists

Our panel of readers will shortlist the finalists:

Ashna Ali is a queer, disabled, and diasporic Bangladeshi poet raised in Italy and based in Brooklyn, NY. They are the author of The Relativity of Living Well (The Operating System, 2022), and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Split This Rock’s The Quarry, Sundog Lit, Nat. Brut, Zoeglossia, Kajal Mag, and several other journals. They hold a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from The Graduate Center, CUNY, and are a current In Surreal Life fellow. IG: @doctordushtu, Substack: painbaby.substack.com, Website: www.ashnaali.com

Vanessa Couto Johnson (she/they) is the author of the full-length poetry books pH of Au (Parlor Press, Free Verse Editions Series 2022) and Pungent dins concentric (Tolsun Books, 2018), as well as three poetry chapbooks. Most recently, Vanessa’s poems have appeared in The Shore, The Broken City, Vagabond City Lit, and Rough Cut, among others. A Brazilian who was born in Texas (dual citizen), VCJ has taught at Texas State University since 2014.

Tez Figueroa (he/they/el/elle) is a detribalized Mexican-Puerto Riquen danzante, writer, educator, and advocate from Oklahoma and Texas. Tez received his MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University and has been published in Acentos Review, I Scream Social Anthology I, Sub/mission from House of Theodora, and others. Tez works for the rights of LGBTQIA+ youth in Central Texas and is working on a collection of poetry on trans adulthood and the strength of survivors.

Rodney Gomez is a poet and urbanist whose work explores the natural and built environments, culture, and history in the U.S./Mexico borderlands. A member of the Macondo Writers Workshop, he served as the 2020-2021 McAllen, Texas Poet Laureate. He is the author of Arsenal with Praise Song (Orison Books, 2021), winner of the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for best book of poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters, recipient of the Writers’ League of Texas Book Award, and a finalist for the Balcones Prize; Geographic Tongue (Pleiades Press, 2020), winner of the Pleiades Press Visual Poetry Series; Ceremony of Sand (YesYes Books, 2019), winner of the Writers’ League of Texas Discovery Prize; Citizens of the Mausoleum (Sundress Publications, 2018); and Mouth Filled With Night (Northwestern University Press, 2014), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Prize from Northwestern University’s Poetry and Poetics Colloquium.

Stephanie Kaylor is the author of Ask A Sex Worker! (CLASH Books, 2024) and is completing their PhD in Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara. She has received residencies and fellowships for creative writing from Sundress Academy for the Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where she was a finalist for the Richard S. and Julia Lousie Reynolds Poetry Fellowship. Their writing can be found in publications including Four Way Review, Salamander Magazine, and Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex (PM Press, 2023).

Jayson Keery is a writer, editor, and arts coordinator based in Western Massachusetts. They are the author of The Choice is Real (Metatron Press, 2023) and the chapbook Astroturf (o•blēk editions, edited by Peter Gizzi, 2022). They have been anthologized in Mundus Press’s Nocturnal Properties, Nightboat Books’ We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, and Pilot Press London’s A Queer Anthology of Rage. A complete list of publications, awards, and interviews live online at JaysonKeery.com.

Sarah Kersey is a poet and x-ray technologist from New Jersey. She was a finalist for the 2021 PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship, and has received support from Tin House Workshop. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Hypertext Magazine, Columbia Journal, The Hellebore, and elsewhere. She tweets @sk__poet.

Leslie McIntosh (all pronouns respectfully used) is black, male presenting, male attracted, autistic, an older millennial, a poet, a fictionist, &. Leslie has received support, in the form of residencies and fellowships, from Breadloaf, Callaloo, Millay Arts, The Watering Hole, Zoeglossia, and more. Leslie’s work has appeared in numerous publications, such as Beloit Poetry Journal, Foglifter, Obsidian, Split This Rock, Southern Humanities Review, Witness, and in the forthcoming anthology, In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (Black Lawrence Press, 2024). A nominee for both Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, as well as a semi-finalist for the 2022 92Y Discovery Award, Leslie is an Assistant Poetry Editor at Newfound and lives on the stolen land of the Munsee Lenape, currently known as Jersey City, NJ, USA.

Wafaa Mustafa is an Iraqi poet from Dearborn, Mich., and a graduate of Wayne State University where she studied English and philosophy. She is a teaching artist with Inside Out Literary Arts and a member of the Room Project in Detroit; her writing probes the burden of context.

Laura Neuman is the author of Stop the Ocean (Stockport Flats, 2014) and risk::nonchalance (Omnidawn chapbooks award, 2017). She/they live in Philadelphia, where they spent ten years collaborating with dance companies and now live with her partner and two kids. Laura’s work has been supported by The Fund for Poetry, and appeared in Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, edited by Trace Peterson and TC Tolbert (Nightboat).

Mandy Moe Pwint Tu is a writer and a poet from Yangon, Myanmar. Her work has appeared in Longleaf Review, West Trestle Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and is the author of two poetry chapbooks, MONSOON DAUGHTER (Thirty West Publishing House, 2022) and UNSPRUNG (Newfound, 2023). Find her on Twitter @mandrigall.

jo reyes-boitel is a poet and playwright living in Texas. Their publications include Michael + Josephine, a novel in verse, (FlowerSong Press, 2019) and the chapbook mouth (Neon Hemlock, 2021). she wears bells, their hybrid opera, was recently chosen as a finalist for Guerilla Opera’s annual virtual festival in May 2022. Recent or forthcoming publications include Zocalo Public Square, Huizache, and Acentos Review. jo is a mentor editor with Red Salmon Arts/Resistencia Bookstore and serves as Writing & Hybrid Works Editor for OyeDrum. jo is currently completing her MFA at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Winners & Finalists

2023

Judge: Natalie Diaz

Winner: Nailah Mathews (they/them) is a nonbinary Black poet to whom books and Black lives matter. A 2022 Periplus Fellow and 2023 Anaphora Arts alumn, their poetry has been featured in Hennepin Review, Lucky Jefferson, Passenger Journal, and the Black Lesbian Literary Collective among others. You can read their work at nailahwritesnovels.com.

Their winning chapbook, better hands, will be published by Newfound in spring of 2024.

Finalists: Yasmine Badaoui, Jai Bashir, and leilani portillo.

2022

Judge: Donika Kelly

Winner: Yunkyo Moon-Kim is a lesbian poet residing in the Midwest. Born in the south of Korea, they write about psychological, physiological, and geographic locations in perpetual precarity. Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, The Cincinnati Review, The Margins, and elsewhere. They are a development assistant for Foglifter.

Their winning chapbook, Transuding, was published by Newfound in fall of 2023.

Finalists: Jasmine An, Ukata Edwardson, and Stephanie Niu.

2021

Judge: Chen Chen

Winner: emet ezell wants to understand the relationship between ancestral grief and collective imagination. For emet, the key to this wisdom is devotional attention. Born and raised beneath Texas skies, they inhabit the borderlands between the visible and the invisible. emet is a community organizer, an aquarius rising, and a libra sun. Their writing has appeared or is forthcoming from PM Press, Stone of Madness Press, Pigeon Pages, and Cordella Magazine. When they reincarnate, they hope to become a bird.

Their winning chapbook, between every bird, our bones, was published by Newfound in fall of 2022.

Finalists: Michelle Moncayo, heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, and Yvanna Vien Tica.

2020

Judge: Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Winner: Caribeño writer and anti-disciplinary scholar, Eric Morales-Franceschini works in the fields of decolonial studies, liberation theology, radical political economy, and the mythopoetics of history. His poetry has been published at Kweli, Acentos Review, Moko, Witness, Dryland, Chiricú, and Somos en escrito; reviews at Newfound, The Rumpus, Tropics of Meta, and Boston Review; and scholarly articles at Global South Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Centro, and Jump Cut. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in southern Florida, he is a former day laborer, community college grad, and Army veteran who now holds a Ph.D. from UC, Berkeley and is Assistant Professor of English and Latin American Studies at the University of Georgia.

His winning chapbook, Autopsy of a Fall, was published by Newfound in fall of 2021.

Finalists: Stephanie Berger, Lupita Eyde-Tucker, Mónica Gomery, and Rushi Vyas.

2019

Judge: Carolina Ebeid

Winner: Tracy Fuad is the author of “DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD” (TxtBooks, 2019) and the chapbook “Imagined State,” which won the 2019 Baltic Writing Residency contest. Her work has appeared in POETRY, Best New Poets, Washington Square Review, Bennington Review, and the Boston Review’s anthology “*What Nature*” (MIT Press, 2018), and she was the winner of Pacific Literary’s 2018 Poetry Contest. Her writing has been supported by fellowships and residencies from Hedgebrook, Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and the Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Iraqi Kurdistan, where she teaches English at a public university.

Her winning chapbook, Pith, was published by Newfound in summer of 2020.

Finalists: Hari Alluri and Maya Salameh.

2018

Judge: Cynthia Cruz

Winner: Iranian-American writer and translator Kaveh Bassiri has won the Bellingham Review’s 49th Parallel Award, the Witter Bynner Poetry Translation Residency, and a 2019 translation fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have been published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bellevue Literary Review, Nimrod International Journal, Mississippi Review, and “Best New Poets.” His translations have appeared in the Chicago Review, Colorado Review, Guernica, Two Line, World Literature Today, Los Angeles Review, and The Massachusetts Review.

His winning chapbook, 99 Names of Exile, was published by Newfound in summer of 2019.

Finalists: Shilpa Kamat and Rennie Ament.

2017

Judge: CAConrad

Winner: Meredith Stricker is a visual artist and poet. She is the author of Our Animal (Omnidawn), Tenderness Shore (National Poetry Series Award), Alphabet Theater (Wesleyan), and Mistake (Caketrain Press). Her most recent collection REWILD was awarded the Dorset Prize and is forthcoming from Tupelo Press. She is co-director of visual poetry studio, a collaborative that focuses on architecture in Big Sur, Calif., and projects to bring together artists, writers, musicians, and experimental forms.

Her winning chapbook, ANEMOCHORE, was published by Newfound in summer of 2018 and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Four Quartets Prize from the Poetry Society of America.

Finalists: Afua Ansong, Andrew Demcak, and Grey Vild. Poems by our finalists will be published in Newfound’s Print no. 4 issue.

2016

Judge: Eduardo C. Corral

Winner: Nico Amador‘s work uses poetry to explore various histories—real and imagined, personal and generational—in an attempt to reconcile the contradictions embedded in his experience as a trans, queer, and mixed race Latino. His work has appeared in Poet Lore, Nimrod International Journal, MiPOesias, HOLD, Big Bell, Plenitude, Bedfellows, and APIARY Magazine, and he is a recent alumni of the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Writer’s Retreat. Nico is also a co-editor of Thread Makes Blanket Press and helped to found the Rogue Writing Workshop in Philadelphia, which provides access to workshop instruction with accomplished poets for those writing and learning outside of academic institutions.

Nico is a community organizer and training associate with Training for Change, an organizations focused on building skills among activists standing up for social, economic and environmental justice. In 2014 Nico was honored by the Peace and Justice Studies Association as “Peace Educator of the Year” for excellence in scholarship and dedication to peace education.

His winning chapbook, Flower Wars, was published by Newfound in spring of 2017.

Finalists: Laura Sobbott Ross and Junior Dare. Poems by our finalists were published in Newfound’s Print no. 3 issue.

2015

Judge: Carmen Giménez Smith

Winner: M. J. Gette is author of the chapbooks “Poor Banished Child of Eve” (H_NGM_N, 2016) and the forthcoming “OMBLIGO INTAGLIO” by Ricochet Editions. Her writing has appeared or will appear in BAX – Best Experimental Writing 2019, Minor Literatures, The Operating System, InReview, Cloud Rodeo, 3:am, DIAGRAM, Anthro/Poetics, BOAAT, Tupelo Quarterly and elsewhere. She won the Black Warrior Review Flash Prose Prize, selected by Joyelle McSweeney (2017), and was a runner up for the Society for Humanistic Anthropology (SHA) Ethnographic Poetry Prize (2017). She is recipient of multiple fellowships and residencies, and holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota. She is currently a PhD student in Anthropology at UT Austin.

Her winning chapbook, The Walls They Left Us, was published by Newfound in spring of 2016.

Finalists: Dan Donaghy, Amanda Huynh, Anna King Ivey, Davy Knittle, Éireann Lorsung, and Natalie Scenters-Zapico. Poems by our finalists were published in Newfound’s Print no. 2 issue.

2014

Judge: Ada Limón

Winner: Rodney Gomez is the author of the forthcoming collection “Citizens of the Mausoleum” (Sundress Publications, 2018). His chapbooks include “Mouth Filled with Night” (Northwestern University Press, 2014), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize, and “A Short Tablature of Loss” (Seven Kitchens Press, 2017), winner of the Ran Arroyo Chapbook Prize. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, Rattle, Pleiades, Denver Quarterly, Barrow Street, Blackbird, and RHINO, where it won the Editors’ Prize. Born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, he earned a BA from Yale and an MFA from the University of Texas-Pan American. He has been awarded residencies to the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Santa Fe Art Institute.

He has also served on the board of Migrant Health Promotion, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health and well-being of migrants, immigrants, and related populations. He edits the accompanying anthology to El Retorno, an annual event honoring Gloria E. Anzaldúa held at the University of Texas-Pan American. He works as an urban planner in Weslaco, Texas.

His winning chapbook, Spine, was published by Newfound in spring of 2015. A video interview with the poet was produced and published on our blog and on YouTube.

Finalists: Heather Kirn Lanier and Olivia Cronk. Poems by both finalists were published in Newfound’s Print no. 1 issue.

Closed—share your writing with us next year!