You are invited to submit to The 2025 Queer Poetry Prize! This spring, we encourage poets of all backgrounds to share any poems that meditate on the idea of “queerness.” These poems could explore sexuality, gender, or form. We do not require submitters to identify as LGBTQ+, because we hope to celebrate writers who are learning about themselves through poetry, in addition to those who identify as queer poets. Please send us your experiments in poetic form, meditations on relationships, and inquiries into yourself.

This prize will be judged by CAConrad, who asks submitters to consider the following prompt:

Queering the language is what we do as poets, not only in content but also form. It's how the page is a possibility for both the poet and the reader, the space around the words may seem empty, but it is where our imaginations extend the poem, queering the vowel, vibrating from our bodies, the poem reaching out of writer and reader alike. Trust yourself in where you stand on how you love this world in your very own queer way. We need one another, very much so right now, and poetry is a divinatory fiber flexing the connection with every reading and rereading, strengthening our confidence in our right to breathe inside our queer bodies in a world where we create solidarity one poem at a time. I am very grateful to have been invited to read the poems for this contest. I admit that I'm never excited about having to choose a winner. I'm more excited about experiencing the music and the magic you will all bring to this moment of life on planet Earth.

           —CAConrad

Submissions are open from February 4, 2025, to April 6, 2025. The first-place winning poet will be awarded $3,000 and publication in Palette Poetry. The second-place and third-place winners will receive $300 and $200, respectively, as well as publication.

CAConrad has worked with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. Their latest book is Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return (Wave Books / UK Penguin 2024). They received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a PEN Josephine Miles Award, a Creative Capital Grant, a Pew Fellowship, and a Lambda Award. The Book of Frank is now available in 13 different languages, and they coedited SUPPLICATION: Selected Poems of John Wieners (Wave Books). They exhibit poems as art objects with recent solo shows in Tucson, Arizona, as well as in Spain and Portugal. They teach at the Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam.

Submission Guidelines: Please read carefully!

• Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English—inclusion of other languages is welcome, as long as the poem is largely written in English.
• DO NOT INCLUDE your name or identifying information in the document OR submission title box.
• We are only accepting unpublished work. If your poem has been published elsewhere, even on a blog or on social media, it is not eligible.
• We accept simultaneous submissions—just please send us a note if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere.
• Your submission must be no more than three poems and under ten pages. Please submit all your poems in ONE document. Please begin each poem on a new page and include each poem’s individual title.
• We do accept multiple submissions (of one to three poems apiece), but each submission will include the $20 reading fee.
• Writers from historically marginalized groups are invited to submit for free until we reach the fifty free entries budgeted for this particular contest. (This category is now closed.)
• Please include a brief cover letter in the cover letter box with your publication history, if any. This text box is where you can include your name and/or bio! If you select the editorial feedback option, this cover letter is also where you can name which poem you’d like feedback on. To safeguard our reading staff, please include content warnings in the cover letter, if applicable, as well.
• Review our FAQ page for frequently asked questions.
• NOTE: If after submitting you notice an error in your submission, please message us rather than withdrawing and resubmitting your submission. We can open it to editing once so you can correct the error.
• Palette Poetry does not accept AI-produced work.
• Contest closes April 6, 2025. Submitters will be notified of their submission status eight to twelve weeks after the contest closing date.

Discount for Submitters

As a thank you for your support for Palette, we’d like to offer a 10% off discount code on a writing class from The Writing Salon. Find a class and use the code included in the confirmation message at checkout.

Editorial Feedback Option

This option costs $59 and will provide you with two pages of detailed and actionable feedback on a poem of your choice from the submission, including suggestions for future submissions. The three-letter option costs $149 and will provide you with six pages of detailed and actionable feedback on a poem of your choice from the submission, including suggestions for future submissions, from three separate guest editors. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and are all incredibly astute poets.