Moonstone Chapbook Contest 2023

Submissions open until November 4, 2023

Lynn Levin, Judge

Submit here

Winner will receive:

• $500 cash prize
• Publication and 25 copies of the book*
• Promotion on our website
• Reading at one of our venues in Philadelphia (or virtual reading, if preferred)

• Individual poems may have been previously published, but the work as a whole must be new. Simultaneous submissions to other publishers or contests are permitted so long as you promptly notify Moonstone Press if the manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
• Include only one poem per page.
• If a poem continues to a second page, indicate whether there is a stanza break. Thirty-five lines equal one page. Divider pages or section titles should be included in the total page count. When determining total line length for each poem, include spaces between stanzas (example: a poem of 5 couplets would equal 14 lines). Numbers or section breaks should also be included as lines when calculating total line length. Count an epigraph as three extra lines. A line that has more than 60 characters (including spaces and punctuation) should be counted as two lines of your total line count. If lines are staggered like a Ferlinghetti poem, estimate the width of the line. Keep in mind that the final chapbook will be printed with saddle-stitched binding on pages that are 4 1/2 inches wide.

• a biography (this can be included in the Submittable form), a cover page with contact information, table of contents, dedication, acknowledgments for any previous publications, and an inside title page (with no name). These pages should not be included in the manuscript’s total page count. The cover page should include the manuscript title and all contact information (mailing address, email address, home phone, and cell phone if available).
• Your name should not appear anywhere on the manuscript itself.

• Submit via Submittable (https://moonstoneartscenter.submittable.com/submit/269846/moonstones-annual-chapbook-contest-2023)
• There is a $15 non-refundable readers fee for participating in the contest
• The contest will be judged by the Editorial Committee at Moonstone Press and our final judge, Lynn Levin

2023 Chapbook Contest Final Judge

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Moonstone Chapbook Contest 2022

Submissions open from August 1, 2022 to October 31, 2022

This year’s contest will be judged by Nathalie F. Anderson

Winner will receive

• $300 cash prize
• Publication and 25 copies of the book*
• Promotion on our website, newsletter, and social media channels
• Reading at one of our venues in Philadelphia

About the Judge:

Nathalie F. Anderson’s books of poetry include Following Fred Astaire, Crawlers, Quiver, Stain, and the chapbook Held and Firmly Bound. She collaborated in 2021 with artist Susan Hagen and poet Lisa Sewell on Birds of North America, and her new book, Rough, is forthcoming in 2024 from The Word Works. Anderson’s poems have appeared in such journals as Atlanta Review, DoubleTake, Natural Bridge, The New Yorker, Nimrod, and Plume. She manages the list-serv Lit-Philly that informs about 500 members about literary events in Philadelphia. A 1993 Pew Fellow, she has recently retired from Swarthmore College, where she taught for 39 years, and served as Director of the Program in Creative Writing.

Please submit about twenty-five pages of material.

• Individual poems may have been previously published, but the work as a whole must be new.
• Simultaneous submissions to other publishers or contests are permitted so long as you promptly notify Moonstone Press if a manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
• Include only one poem per page.
• If a poem continues to a second page, indicate whether or not there is a stanza break. Thirty-five lines equal one page. Divider pages or section titles should be included in the total page count. When determining total line length for each poem, include spaces between stanzas (example: a poem of 5 couplets would equal 14 lines). Numbers or section breaks (often indicated by a * symbol) should also be included as lines when calculating total line length. Count an epigraph as three extra lines. A line that has more than 60 characters (including spaces and punctuation) should be counted as two lines of your total line count. If lines are staggered like a Ferlinghetti poem, estimate the width of the line
• The final chapbook will be printed in 11 point Garamond font on pages that are 5 1/2 inches wide.

Include the following:

• A cover letter with the manuscript title and all contact information (mailing address, email address, home phone, and cell phone if available). Your name should not appear anywhere on the manuscript.
• A table of contents, which will not count towards the total page count
• A short author’s biography in the labeled Submittable field (100 words or less)
• $25 readers fee**

Submit via Submittable: https://moonstoneartscenter.submittable.com/submit/228716/moonstone-chapbook-contest-2022 

• The submissions will first be evaluated by the Moonstone Editorial Team. The 10 finalists will be reviewed by our final judge, Nathalie Anderson.
• Winners will be announced around mid-December 2022.

* additional copies will be available for purchase

                   ** Please note that this fee is nonrefundable should you decide not to participate.

                   See our publishing guidelines if you would like to publish with The Moonstone Press

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Moonstone Chapbook Contest 2020

Grand Prize: Kyle Laws, The Sea is Woman

Winner of the 2020 Moonstone Chapbook Contest, Kyle Laws is based out of Steel City Art Works in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. She was born in Philadelphia and her family maintains a home there. Collections include Uncorseted (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2020), Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence coauthored with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize and one for Best of the Net, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany. She is editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. (The Sea Is Woman, $10.00, ISBN: 978-1-954499-07-2)

Runners-up:

Faith Paulsen‘s poetry and prose have appeared in many venues including One Art, Ghost City Press, Seaborne, Book of Matches, Thimble Literary Magazine, Evansville Review, Mantis, Psaltery and Lyre, and Terra Preta. Her work has also been anthologized in collections such as 50/50: Poems & Translations by Womxn over 50 (QuillsEdge). She has been nominated for a Pushcart. Her chapbook “A Color Called Harvest” (Finishing Line Press) was published in 2016. A third chapbook, “Cyanometer,” (Finishing Line Press) is expected in late 2021. (We Marry We Bury We Sing or We Weep, $10.00, ISBN: 978-1-954499-08-9)

The Tongue They Shared is 24 pages of Paul Siegell mesmerized by live music, mental health, America, Philadelphia, and the beloved tomato. Siegell is Pennsylvania’s 2021 Montgomery County Poet Laureate and the author of Take Out Delivery (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018), wild life rifle fire (Otoliths Books, 2010), jambandbootleg (A-Head Publishing, 2009) and Poemergency Room (Otoliths Books, 2008). A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is an award-winning creative director at The Philadelphia Inquirer and was a senior editor at Painted Bride Quarterly from 2007-2019. In 2015, his work was selected for the Pennsylvania’s Center for the Book’s Public Poetry Project. (The Tongue They Shared, $10.00, ISBN: 978-1-954499-09-6)

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Moonstone 2015 Chapbook Contest Reading

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Brandywine Workshop

728 S. Broad St.

Winner of the 2015 Moonstone Chapbook Contest, Joe Roarty was born in 1953 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has lived in Pittsburgh, Pa., Cleveland, Ohio, Boston, Mass., and Chicago, IL. and Philadelphia.“”Moritat (German for “street ballad”) is poetry of high octane energy, passionate intelligence, supercharged, insistent blues, jazz and heightened speech rhythms, whose original language mixes dictions with masterful ease–at home on the street and in the stratosphere, a colloquial invention that uses texting’s phonetic spelling, omitting vowels in a way that drives the lines, while his images mix references in our polyglot way: “I hav hrd/ americn wrds”.  Our violence finds voice in his riff on Kennedy’s murder: Capt. Kangaroo’s head-banging rabbit, “Kennedy’s skull, America’s wars/bangbangbang,” and our sorrows in the gritty soul-reach of his hung-over, moving lament for Tennesee Williams that reminded me of Frank O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died,” but with a very different, driving energy/

He can be flat out funny: “if i was mark zukerbrg/i wouldn’t have ths problem” and he can be prophetic—moving from, in the first poem, how the city uses you up, to the last poem which sees universal horror through the agonized figures in the Greek statue, Laocoon, “wn gods kill thr priests…” and the the snake, “motion coild on itslf,” rises, unnatural, from below…but you need to read and hear these poems for yourself, because inside his words is where the power resides.” Eleanor Wilner,

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Honorable Mentions Include:

Jim Cory

James M. Cory – byline Jim Cory – is a poet and a fiction writer interested in history, ornithology and architecture. He has reviewed books (for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram), written many essays (for American Book Review, James White Review, Philadelphia City Paper, etc.), authored eight books or chapbooks of poetry (most recently No Brainer Variations, 2011 from Rain Mountain Press, NYC), established a poetry publishing cooperative (1990s) in Philadelphia and has been the editor of James Broughton’s Selected Poems (Packing Up For Paradise, 1998 by Black Sparrow Press) and the Selected Poems of Jonathan Williams (Jubilant Thicket, 2005, Copper Canyon Press). He was the first recepient of fellowships by the Pennsylvania Arts Council (1989), Yaddo (1994) and the MacDowell Colony (2014).

Greg Francis

A resident of Southeastern Pennsylvania since 1976, Greg Francis has served his community as a classroom teacher, courtroom lawyer, and congressional aide. Listed in both the Internet Speculative Fiction Database and the Locus Index to Science Fiction, his work has appeared in Mad Poets Review, Eldritch Tales, and Golden Iris.

Jeffrey Ethan Lee

Jeffrey Ethan Lee’s first novel is forthcoming from White Pine Press in 2016. His dramatic poetry book, identity papers (Ghost Road Press, 2006), was a 2006 Colorado Book Award finalist. His towards euphoria was the co-winner of the editor’s poetry chapbook prize from Seven Kitchens Press (2012), which was also the prequel to his first full-length poetry book, invisible sister (Many Mountains Moving Press, April 2004), which was praised in American Book Review, etc. He on the 2002 Sow’s Ear Poetry Chapbook prize ($1,000) for The Sylf (2003), created identity papers for Drimala Records, published Strangers in a Homeland (chapbook with Ashland Poetry Press, 2001), and hundreds of poems, stories and essays in North American Review, Xconnect, Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Many Mountains Moving, Crosscurrents, American Poetry Review, Green Mountain Review, Washington Square. He has a Ph.D in British Romanticism and an MFA from NYU. He teaches the humanities at Temple University and in Creative Writing at various places, including Muhlenberg College and the Shambhala Center in Philadelphia.

For more information on having your poetry book or chapbook published with Moonstone Press, please click here.