The Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize


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About

$1,000 + Publication

2025 Judge: KB Brookins

Established in 2001, The Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize highlights one book a year that excels in the chapbook format. Since 2024, the Prize comes with a $1,000 advance, a standard royalty contract, and 10 copies of the published book.

Recent judges include Carolyn Hembree, Alison Pelegrin, Taylor Johnson, Benjamin Garcia, Esther Lin, and Gary Jackson.

Submissions open each year on January 1 and close on March 31.

Winner of the 2024 Robert Phillips Chapbook Prize:

6 Lineage Poems, by Fernando Trujillo

Selected by Carolyn Hembree


Submission Guidelines

Submit to The Robert Phillips Chapbook Prize

General Guidelines

*Writers who studied with TRP staff or the final judge for a semester-length period are not eligible. Writers who studied with TRP staff or the final judge for two-week residencies, single workshops, or other instances less than a semester in length are eligible, provided the work submitted is previously unseen by TRP staff or the final judge.

Manuscript Guidelines


Contest Judge: KB Brookins

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KB Brookins is a Black, queer, and trans writer, educator, and cultural worker from Texas. Their writing is featured in Poets.org, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, Poetry Society of America, Oxford American, and elsewhere. KB’s poetry chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize, a Writer’s League of Texas Discovery Prize, and a Stonewall Honor Book Award. Their poetry collection Freedom House, described as “urgent and timely” by Vogue, won the American Library Association Barbara Gittings Literature Award and the Texas Institute of Letters Award for the Best First Book of Poetry. Freedom House was named a Best Book of 2023 by four publications; KB adapted Freedom House into a solo art exhibit, which has shown at multiple museums. Their debut memoir Pretty (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024) won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award in Creative Nonfiction.

KB’s background in nonprofit management, student affairs, and K-12 teaching informs their cultural work. They founded and co-led two nonprofits to advance LGBTQIA+ justice and nurture/amplify marginalized artists in Central Texas. For two years, KB was the Program Coordinator of the Gender and Sexuality Center at the University of Texas at Austin, where they founded the Black Queer & Trans Collective and co-led the President’s LGBTQIA+ Committee. KB served as Project Lead/co-editor for the benefit anthologies Winter Storm Project, Do You Want a Revolution, and Watch Dogs. They also facilitated a youth poetry film workshop on policing in Central Texas schools (which can be viewed here), and they hosted a variety show to raise funds for trans people’s gender affirming care. Most recently, they successfully organized for the creation of the city of Austin’s adult poet laureate program.

KB has earned fellowships and residencies from National Endowment of the Arts, Sewanee Writers Conference, Tin House, Lambda Literary, Civil Rights Corps, and elsewhere. Their poem “Good Grief” won the Academy of American Poets 2022 Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize. KB has performed with The Moth, Texas Book Festival, and many other venues and institutions. They starred in an award-winning short documentary titled Earth To KB, which screened at 13 film festivals internationally. KB’s TV pilot in-progress, Church Girl, made it to the 2nd round of Austin Film Festival’s 2024 Script Competition.

Currently, KB is an MFA candidate and instructor at The University of Texas at Austin; a City of Austin LGBTQ Quality of Life Commissioner; an Austin Poet Laureate Committee member; a Sundress Publications Board of Directors member; and a judge for two Texas Institute of Letters poetry prizes. When not working, KB enjoys reading, throwing a lil sumn’ on the grill, and sending memes to their spouse. Follow KB online at @earthtokb, and subscribe to their sporadic opinions/updates through their newsletter, Out of This World.

Photo Credit: Jeremy A. Teel


Robert Phillips

Robert Phillips (1938-2022), for whom this competition is named, is the author or editor of over thirty volumes of poetry, fiction, and criticism. His honors include a Pushcart Prize, an American Academy and Institute of Arts Letters Award in Literature, a New York State Council on the Arts CAPS Grant in Poetry, MacDowell Colony and Yaddo Fellowships, a National Public Radio Syndicated Fiction Project Award, a Syracuse University Arents Pioneer Medal, and Texas Institute of Letters membership.


Previous Winners & Judges:

2024: Fernando Trujillo – 6 Lineage Poems
         Judged by Carolyn Hembree

2023: Christine Kitano – Dumb Luck & other poems
         Judged by Alison Pelegrin

2022: J. L. Conrad – Recovery
         Judged by Taylor Johnson

2021: Marisa Tirado – Selena Didn't Know Spanish Either
         Judged by Benjamin Garcia

2020: Elisabeth Murawski  Still Life with Timex
         Judged by Esther Lin

2019: Thomas V. Nguyen  Permutations of a Self
         Judged by Gary Jackson

2018: Gregory Byrd – The Name for the God Who Speaks
         Judged by Loueva Smith

2017: Evana Bodiker – Ephemera
         Judged by Robert Phillips

2016: Mark Schneider – How Many Faces Do You Have?
         Judged by Richard Foerster

2015: Loueva Smith  Consequences of a Moonless Night
         Judged by Richard Foerster

2014: J. Scott Brownlee – Ascension
         Judged by William Wright

2013: Harold Whit Williams – Backmasking
         Judged by William Wright

2012: David Lanier – Lost and Found
         Judged by Larry D. Thomas

2011: John PopielaskiIsn’t It Romantic?
         Judged by William Wright

2010: Ingrid Browning Moody – Learning About Fire

2009: David Havird – Penelope’s Design
         Judged by Robert Phillips

2008: Rebecca Foust – Mom’s Canoe

2007: Rebecca Foust – Dark Card
         Judged by Robert Phillips

2006: Lisa HammondMoving House

2005: Taylor GrahamThe Downstairs Dance Floor
         Judged by R. S. Gwynn

2004: Kevin Meaux – Myths of Electricity
         Judged by Robert Phillips

2003: Ann Killough – Sinners in the Hands: Selections from the Catalog
         Judged by Beth Ann Fennelly

2002: Nancy Naomi Carlson – Complications of the Heart
         Judged by Richard Foerster

2001: William Notter – More Space Than Anyone Can Stand
         Judged by Gray Jacobick