The X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize

Established in 1998, The X. J. Kennedy Prize seeks to publish one full-length collection of poetry per year. Since 2019 the Prize comes with a $10,000 advance, a standard royalty contract, and 20 copies of the published book.

Submissions open each year on July 1 and close on September 30. To submit please visit our online submission manager

https://texasreview.submittable.com/submit/1489/the-x-j-kennedy-poetry-prize

The X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize

2019 Judge: Marilyn Nelson

General Guidelines

Submissions are open July 1 – September 30.
A fee of $28 must be paid at the time of submission.
Open to any poet writing in English. Translations are not eligible.
The X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize is not a first book prize though we welcome first books. The Prize is open to poets at any stage of their career.
There are no formal restrictions for this prize; we welcome manuscripts of any style/form.
Poems may have been published individually in magazines or anthologies, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished.
Simultaneous submissions are acceptable. Please notify TRP immediately by withdrawing the manuscript via Submittable if the manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
Current and former students and faculty of Sam Houston State University are not eligible. Family members or former students of the final judge are not eligible.
Submissions are accepted through Submittable only.
Winner will receive $10,000, a standard royalty contract, and 20 copies of the published book.
Winner will be announced in December 2019.

Manuscript Guidelines

Manuscripts must be between 50 and 100 pages in length.
Please include a table of contents, title page, and page numbers.
Do not include an acknowledgments page.
No more than one poem per page.
Submissions are judged blind. Please remove any identifying information from the manuscript.
Submit as a .pdf, .docx, or .doc file format.
No revisions will be accepted once the manuscript is uploaded.

2019 Judge: Marilyn Nelson

Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of seventeen poetry books and the memoir How I Discovered Poetry. She is also the author of The Fields Of Praise: New And Selected Poems, which won the 1998 Poets’ Prize, Carver: A Life In Poems, which won the 2001 Boston Globe/Hornbook Award and the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, and Fortune’s Bones, which was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and won the Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. Nelson’s honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Frost Medal. She was the Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut from 2001-2006.

J . Kennedy, for whom this competition is named, is a distinguished poet, translator, anthologist, editor, and is the author of numerous books of poetry, children’s literature, and textbooks on English literature. Kennedy won the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal for lifetime service to poetry in 2009.

Previous Winners:

2018: Garret Keizer – The World Pushes Back

https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781680031843/the-world-pushes-back/

2017: Jay Udall – Because a Fire in Our Heads

https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781680031508/because-a-fire-in-our-heads/

2016: Jeff Hardin – No Other Kind of World

https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781680031355/no-other-kind-of-world/

2015: Gwen Hart – The Empress of Kisses

https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781680030891/the-empress-of-kisses/

2014: Corinna McClanahan Schroeder – Inked

https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781680030594/inked/

2013: Ashley Mace Havird – The Garden of the Fugitives