The Orison Prizes in Poetry & Fiction Orison Books

Each year from December 1 - April 1 we accept submissions of full-length poetry (50-100 pp.) and fiction (30,000 word minimum) manuscripts for The Orison Prizes in Poetry and Fiction, judged by different prominent writers each year in an anonymous judging process. The winning entry in each genre will be awarded publication and a $1,500 cash prize, in addition to a standard royalties contract. Finalists will be selected by the editorial staff at Orison Books, and the winners will be selected from among the finalist manuscripts by the judges. In the event that a judge in either genre does not select a winner from among the finalists, the Editor will select a winner. The editors also reserve the right to select no finalists, in which case all entry fees will be refunded to the entrants. All finalist manuscripts will be considered for publication under a standard royalties contract. We aim to announce contest results by October 15, 2026. Please do not query about results before this date.

2026 judges

Poetry: Leila Chatti

Fiction: Margot Livesey

ABOUT THE JUDGES

Leila Chatti is the author of the poetry collections Wildness Before Something Sublime (Copper Canyon Press, 2025) and Deluge, winner of the 2021 Levis Reading Prize and the 2021 Luschei Prize for African Poetry, and longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award. She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and fellowships and scholarships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Frost Place Conference on Poetry, the Key West Literary Seminars, Dickinson House, and Cleveland State University, where she was the inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Writing and Publishing. Most recently, she was the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College. She currently teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific University and is a Provost Fellow at the University of Cincinnati.

Margot Livesey's tenth novel, The Road from Belhaven, was published in 2024 by Knopf. The Hidden Machinery, a collection of essays on writing, was published by Tin House Books in 2017. Livesey has taught at Boston University, Bowdoin College, Brandeis University, Carnegie Mellon, Cleveland State, Emerson College, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Tufts University, the University of California at Irvine, the Warren Wilson College MFA program for writers, and Williams College. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Artists’ Foundation, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

2026 Orison Fiction Prize Temp Closed

Opens on Tuesday, December 1, 2026 12:00 AM EST (in 77 days).

Original English work only; no translations.
Do not include your name anywhere in your manuscript file or file name, but only in the Duosuma cover letter and biographical note fields.
Individual poems and stories or excerpts may have been previously published in periodicals and/or chapbooks, but the manuscript as a whole must not have been published in book form, whether digital or in print. Self-published manuscripts are considered previously published and are not eligible.
Please include any publication acknowledgments in your cover letter, listing any periodicals where individual pieces from your manuscript first appeared. Acknowledgments should not appear in the manuscript file.
Poetry manuscripts must be 50-100 pages of poems (each poem beginning on a new page; page count does not include front- and back-matter). Fiction manuscripts must have a minimum word count of 30,000.
Fiction manuscripts may consist of short stories, a novel, a novella, flash/micro fiction, or any combination of forms, as long as the manuscript meets the 30,000 word minimum.
Simultaneous submissions are accepted; please withdraw your manuscript through Duosuma immediately should you accept an offer for publication elsewhere.
Multiple manuscripts may be submitted; each manuscript must be submitted separately and be accompanied by a separate entry fee.
Hybrid work, including work that incorporates visual elements, is acceptable. However, we cannot consider manuscripts with interior color pages.
Orison Books is committed to running ethical and transparent contests. Current or former students of the judge or the lead genre editor, or anyone with a close personal relationship with that judge or lead genre editor, are not eligible to submit in the category in question. (Lead genre editors: Luke Hankins [poetry], Jonathan Geltner [fiction].) Judges never see author names until after they have made their selections.
Existing Orison Books authors and current or past Orison Books board or staff members are not eligible for The Orison Prizes.
Orison Books undertakes never to extend contest deadlines, except in the case of technical problems or other events that would prevent submitters from entering the contest by the original deadline.
Entry Fee: $25.
We only accept electronic submissions, which must be sent through our Duosuma page.

Not Open

2026 Orison Poetry Prize Temp Closed

Opens on Tuesday, December 1, 2026 12:00 AM EST (in 77 days).

Original English work only; no translations.
Do not include your name anywhere in your manuscript file or file name, but only in the Duosuma cover letter and biographical note fields.
Individual poems and stories or excerpts may have been previously published in periodicals and/or chapbooks, but the manuscript as a whole must not have been published in book form, whether digital or in print. Self-published manuscripts are considered previously published and are not eligible.
Please include any publication acknowledgments in your cover letter, listing any periodicals where individual pieces from your manuscript first appeared. Acknowledgments should not appear in the manuscript file.
Poetry manuscripts must be 50-100 pages of poems (each poem beginning on a new page; page count does not include front- and back-matter). Fiction manuscripts must have a minimum word count of 30,000.
Fiction manuscripts may consist of short stories, a novel, a novella, flash/micro fiction, or any combination of forms, as long as the manuscript meets the 30,000 word minimum.
Simultaneous submissions are accepted; please withdraw your manuscript through Duosuma immediately should you accept an offer for publication elsewhere.
Multiple manuscripts may be submitted; each manuscript must be submitted separately and be accompanied by a separate entry fee.
Hybrid work, including work that incorporates visual elements, is acceptable. However, we cannot consider manuscripts with interior color pages.
Orison Books is committed to running ethical and transparent contests. Current or former students of the judge or the lead genre editor, or anyone with a close personal relationship with that judge or lead genre editor, are not eligible to submit in the category in question. (Lead genre editors: Luke Hankins [poetry], Jonathan Geltner [fiction].) Judges never see author names until after they have made their selections.
Existing Orison Books authors and current or past Orison Books board or staff members are not eligible for The Orison Prizes.
Orison Books undertakes never to extend contest deadlines, except in the case of technical problems or other events that would prevent submitters from entering the contest by the original deadline.
Entry Fee: $25.
We only accept electronic submissions, which must be sent through our Duosuma page.

Not Open

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