THE 2017 SEXTON PRIZE
The Sexton Prize is an annual publication award with a $1,000 honorarium for an outstanding new collection of poetry by an American poet. The winning manuscript will be published, distributed, and marketed by Eyewear Publishing LTD in both the United States and the United Kingdom simultaneously in the Spring of 2018.
The Sexton Prize is open to poets at all career stages, from emerging to established; poets of every age and level of publication experience are encouraged to submit. Finalists will also be considered for publication.
Submissions ARE NOW open and close JUNE 1, 2017. THE WINNER will be announced no later than NOVEMBER1, 2017.
The final judge for the 2017 Sexton Prize is PROFESSOR KIMIKO HAHN – a major American poet.
The fee to submit to The Sexton Prize is $25. Entrants receive a 50% off coupon for Eyewear Publishing LTD purchases.
ABOUT THE JUDGE
Kimiko Hahn is the author of nine books of poems, including: Brain Fever (W.W. Norton, 2014) and Toxic Flora (WWN, 2010), both collections inspired by science; The Narrow Road to the Interior (WWN, 2006) a collection that takes its title from Basho’s famous poetic journal; The Unbearable Heart (Kaya, 1996), which received an American Book Award; Earshot (Hanging Loose Press, 1992), which was awarded the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and an Association of Asian American Studies Literature Award. As part of her service to the CUNY community, she initiated a Chapbook Festival that has become an annual event co-sponsored by major literary organizations. Since then, she has added chapbooks to her publication list: Ragged Evidence, A Field Guide to the Intractable, Boxes with Respect and The Cryptic Chamber. Hahn takes pleasure in the challenges of collaboration: writing text for film (Coal Fields, 1985 experimental documentary by Bill Brand, Ain’t Nuthin’ But a She-Thing 1995 MTV special, and Everywhere at Once 2008 film based on Peter Lindbergh’s still photos and narrated by Jeanne Moreau), artwork (Lauren Henkin’s photographic series); dance pieces with Tomie Hahn.
Honours include a Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN/Voelcker Award, Shelley Memorial Prize, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has taught in graduate programs at the University of Houston and New York University, and is a distinguished professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, The City University of New York; she has also taught for literary organizations such as the Fine Arts Work Center, Cave Canem and Kundiman. Hahn lives in New York with her husband, true crime writer Harold Schechter.
WHAT MAKES THE SEXTON PRIZE UNIQUE?
The Sexton Prize offers an American poet an opportunity to build an international reputation, as the winning manuscript will be published, distributed, promoted, and nominated for major post-publication awards in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The Sexton Prize is open to poets at all career stages, from emerging to established; poets of every age and level of publication experience are encouraged to submit. The winner of The Sexton Prize will be published within one year of selection, and finalists will also be considered for publication.
GUIDELINES
• Submissions must be made via Eyewear Publishing LTD’s Submittable page between January 6 and JUNE 1, 2017. The fee to submit is $25.
• Manuscripts must be original work, between 48 and 100 pages in length, by a single author, in the English language. There are no restrictions on style or subject matter. The Eyewear staff encourage writers from diverse backgrounds to submit their work.
• Individual poems in the submission may have been previously published online, in periodicals, or in chapbooks, but the collection as a whole must not have been previously published (self publishing constitutes prior publication).
• Submissions should be made without the inclusion of an acknowledgments page.
ELIGIBILITY
The Sexton Prize is open to American poets who either reside in the U.S. or who will be residing in the U.S. as of January 2018. The Prize is open to citizens as well as residents holding legal statuses including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival, Temporary Protected, and Legal Permanent (“green card”), among others. Contact Eyewear if you have questions about eligibility.
CODE OF ETHICS
• All entries will be screened by the Eyewear Publishing LTD staff; we will not use students or interns to screen submissions.
• The Final Judge of The 2017 Sexton Prize is Kimiko Hahn. Close friends, employees, family members, and current students of the final judge are not eligible to submit to The Sexton Prize.
• Authors who have had a full-length work published by Eyewear Publishing LTD are not eligible to submit to The Sexton Prize.
• The Sexton Prize takes its name from the church office of the sexton: a custodian of sacred objects and a ringer of bells that call communities to gather. It’s our mission in The Sexton Prize to be caretakers of literary talent in our time, and to sound the call for international literary communities to come together in the celebration of poetry. It also echoes the name of a poet important to us.