The 2026 Ekphrastic Poetry Prize—$3,500 Awarded—Free Entry for BIPOC and Historically Marginalized Poets

The 2026 Ekphrastic Poetry Prize

July 1, 2026 – August 30, 2026

$3,500 Awarded

Judged by Divya Victor

NOTE: This submission category is for BIPOC and historically marginalized poets ONLY. 

As summer reaches full swing, we invite you to use those scenic views by participating in our upcoming Ekphrastic Poetry Prize! Ekphrastic poems offer a writer's unique perspective and perception of a specific work of art, breathing new life into it. We're excited to welcome Divya Victor as our judge, so please join us in contemplating established images like "Café Terrace at Night" by Vincent van Gogh, Andy Warhol's "Untitled from Flowers," and Frida Kahlo portraits, or your favorite film, the sculptures in your local park, or even reinventing your own images! Whether you choose to interpret a painting or create your own narrative from a found photograph, we encourage you to send your ekphrastic poems our way!

Submissions are open from July 1, 2026 – August 30, 2026. Palette’s editors will choose the ten finalists and any honorable mentions that warrant extra attention. Our judge will then select the winner and two runners-up for publication. The winner will be awarded $3,000, publication, and a brief interview in Palette Poetry. Second and third place will receive $300 and $200, respectively, as well as publication. Finalists may also be considered for publication in our Featured Poetry category.

Divya Victor (b. 1983) is a Tamil-American poet, essayist, and educator. She is the author of CURB (Nightboat Books), which won the 2022 PEN America Open Book Award and the 2022 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. It was also a finalist for the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award (Poetry). Her next book, KIN, a collection of essays, is due out from Graywolf in 2027. She is the recipient of a 2025 Creative Capital Award for this work.

Divya is also the author of KITH (Fence Books/ Book*hug); Scheingleichheit: Drei Essays (Merve Verlag, trans. Lena Schmidt), NATURAL SUBJECTS (Trembling Pillow), UNSUB (Insert Blanc), and THINGS TO DO WITH YOUR MOUTH (Les Figues). Her work has been collected in numerous venues, including BOMB, the New Museum’s The Animated Reader, Crux: Journal of Conceptual Writing, The Best American Experimental Writing, POETRY, The Yale Review, American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, W.W. Norton’s The Seagull Reader, and boundary2.

She is an Associate Professor of English and Writing at Michigan State University, where she was the recipient of the institution’s Teacher-Scholar Award (2023) and its exclusive nominee for the Michigan Association of State Universities Distinguished Professor of the Year Award in both 2024 and 2025. Here, she is the Director of the Creative Writing Program.

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. At this time, Palette does not accept translated work unless you are also the author of the original poem.
• 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 accept simultaneous submissions—just please send us a note if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere.
• 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.
• DO NOT INCLUDE your name or identifying information in the document OR submission title box.
• 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 or -assisted work. Such submissions will be automatically declined.
• Contest closes August 30, 2026. Submitters will be notified of their submission status within twelve weeks of 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.