This summer, we invite you to submit your poetry to our 2025 [FREE] Challenge! With everything happening in the world right now, and during a cost-of-living crisis, we at Palette want to offer an accessible space for all poets—a moment to breathe and write without the concern of a financial barrier. From June 23 to July 13, we will be open for submissions without any entry fee. The Palette editors will select one winning poem to receive $500 and publication. Finalists may also be considered for publication. 

We hope you’ll join us—whether you’re polishing your next masterpiece or putting pen to paper for the first time in months. Bring us your boldest, most resonant poetry. We can’t wait to read your work.

Submission Guidelines: Please read carefully!

• [FREE] submissions are open from June 23, 2025 – July 13, 2025.
• For this challenge, please submit only once! We hope to offer this free opportunity to as many people as we can without exceeding the reading capacity of our team. 
• Your submission must be no more than three poems and under ten pages. Please submit all your poems in ONE document. Begin each poem on a new page and include each poem’s individual title.
• Submitted poems can take any form and explore any theme or motif.
• 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• We are only accepting unpublished work.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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Review our FAQ page for frequently asked questions. NOTE: Unlike our other contests, you may only submit once for this challenge.
• 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.
• This challenge closes July 13, 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.

Dear poets,

We are halfway through the year, and it’s time to examine our artistic practices and writing goals. With the objective of demystifying the craft of poetry and the field of publication, I would like to invite you into our Summer Async Studio, a program aimed to educate and provide new inspiration and direction for your poetry.

This summer, I am excited to share with you our growing library of twelve mini lectures on poetry craft topics, which were created by Palette Poetry editors and other talented poets in our community. Our intention is to give you accessible and rewatchable advice to aid you in developing your writing. You will explore strategic line breaks, revision strategies for poetry, different forms your poem can take, how to put together a chapbook, and more.

You will also receive direct feedback on your poetry. After a close read of your submission, our guest editors will send you an editorial letter full of observations, next steps, and possible paths to publication.

This summer, we invite you to work closely with the Palette team to shift your poetry practice into its best shape yet.

Write on!

Elyssia Nguyen

Editor in Chief

our partner instructors:

A combination of individual feedback and expert instruction, the Async Studio is here to support writers who want to make progress in their craft. We’re thrilled to partner with some wonderful poets to continue growing our resource library, with short craft videos from:

Joanna Acevedo (she/they) is a writer, educator, and editor from New York City. She is the author of four books and chapbooks, including Unsaid Things (Flexible Press, 2021), List of Demands (Bottlecap Press, 2022), and Outtakes (WTAW Press, 2023). Her work can be found across the web and in print, including or forthcoming in Jelly Bucket, Hobart, and The Adroit Journal. She is a guest editor at Palette Poetry, Frontier Poetry, The Masters Review, and CRAFT, and a regular contributor to The Masters Review blog, in addition to acting as assistant fiction editor at Foglifter Journal. Currently, she is working as the Sales Rep & Events Coordinator at Black Lawrence Press. She received her MFA in fiction from New York University in 2021, teaches writing, interviewing and communication skills for both nonprofits and corporations, and is supported by Creatives Rebuild New York: Guaranteed Income for Artists.

Sarah Van Arsdale is a writer and artist living in New York and Oaxaca, Mexico. Her seventh book, Catch and Release (Finishing Line Press, 2024), is a poem about the human impact on sea life in Mexico, illustrated with her watercolors. Her first novel, Toward Amnesia, was published by Riverhead Books in 1995. She is the author of three other books of fiction, two other poetry books, and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Antioch University. You can see more of her work at https://inourtimes.substack.com/publish/posts.

V. B. Borjen (he/they) is a Yugoslav-born writer, translator and visual artist based in Prague. His first poetry collection in Bosnian won the 2012 Mak Dizdar Award, while his second poetry manuscript won the 2021 Darma Books Best Manuscript Contest in Belgrade and was published in 2025. He holds a PhD in Literatures in English from Masaryk University in Brno. Borjen's poetry and fiction written in English have been featured in BOMB, The Rumpus, Grist Journal, EcoTheo Review, Rattle, IceFloe Press, The Maine Review, and elsewhere. His visual art can be found on the pages of magazines such as High Shelf, Folio, Parentheses, Honey & Lime, and others. Borjen is the 2025 recipient of the PEN America/Heim Translation Fund grant for his work-in-progress translation of Natasa Skazlic' novel Bidon (En. Cherries) published in 2015. As Guest Editor, he writes editorial feedback letters for the US poetry magazine Palette Poetry. He can be reached on Twitter/X: @Borjen or Instagram: @samoniklo.

Flower Conroy is an LGBTQIA+ writer, a National Endowment for the Arts and a MacDowell fellow, and a former Key West poet laureate. She is the author of Snake Breaking Medusa Disorder (NFSPS Press, 2019), winner of the Stevens Manuscript Competition; A Sentimental Hairpin (Tolsun Books, 2021), listed as a November 2021 best seller by Small Press Distribution; and Greenest Grass (WSU Press, 2023), winner of the Blue Lynx Press Prize. Conroy’s work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Community of Writers, and the Key West Literary Seminar. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and the Pushcart Prize. Conroy has exhibited her poetry and assemblage art at The Studios of Key West.

Kenna DeValor (they/them/theirs) is a queer and nonbinary writer that hails from pothole-adorned paradise, Bethlehem, PA, and has been published over 50 times in 2024 alone and recently came out with their third poetry collection entitled DISCOFRUIT. They graduated with a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from Bloomsburg University. Kenna now attends Wilkes University for their MFA program in Creative Writing (Poetry/Fiction). When not writing, reading, or making fun DIY zines, Kenna is a professional tattoo artist and the EIC/Founder of the lit-arts magazine FlowerMouth Press. You can find Kenna on social media: @teadragonz or at www.kennadevalor.com.

Rebecca Evans writes the difficult, the heart-full, the guidebooks for survivors. She’s authored three collections—Tangled by Blood, a memoir in verse; Safe Handling, a collection-length poem; and AfterBurn, a flash essay collection (forthcoming, 2026). She’s a memoirist, essayist, and poet, infusing her love of empowerment with craft. She teaches high school teens in the Juvie system through journaling and visual art. She's earned two MFAs, one in creative nonfiction, the other in poetry, University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe. Rebecca is also a disabled veteran and shares space with four Newfoundlands and her sons in Idaho. She co-hosts Radio Boise’s Writer to Writer show on Stray Theater. Her poems and essays have appeared in Narratively, Brevity, The Rumpus, Hypertext Magazine, War, Literature & the Arts, The Limberlost Review, and more, along with a handful of anthologies.

Anthony Gedell writes from New Jersey, publishing in Hobart, Poverty House, Variant, Revolution John, Punk Noir Magazine, and Bull. He is an editor at Tough Magazine. His debut novel, Love Lies in the Throes of Rhetoric, is out now.

Marcella Haddad (she/her) is the author of Sidewinder (Gateway Literary Press) and Witch House (Ghost City Press). Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in Apparition Lit, Okay Donkey, Variant Literature, and others. She received her MFA from University of Massachusetts Amherst and was a Tin House YA Scholar. She is the former editor in chief of Palette Poetry and the managing editor of Moonflake Press. She teaches at Grubstreet and Clarion West. You can find her in a tree or at marcellaphaddad.com.

Laura S. Marshall (she/they) is a poet, educator, and former linguist who lives outside Albany, New York. Their work appears in South Dakota Review, Bennington Review, The Dodge, trampset, juked, Okay Donkey, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction, as well as longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions. They received an MFA in poetry from University of Massachusetts Amherst, and have served as an editor for jubilat.

Joseph Omoh Ndukwu is a writer, editor, and art critic. His work has appeared in Guernica, Prairie Schooner, Transition, Waxwing, Off Assignment, and elsewhere. His essays on art have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The Sole Adventurer, Contemporary And, The Republic, and in catalogues and journals. In 2021, he was selected for the Momus Emerging Critics Residency, and in 2022, he won the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing. His poem “The Dream Where I'm Dreaming of the Future” was on Lit Hub's notable poems of 2024.

Joshua Roark works as the main faculty for Antioch University Los Angeles’ Post-MFA Certificate in the Teaching of Creative Writing, as well as an infrequent Poetry Mentor for their MFA program. He completed his own MFA in Poetry with Antioch’s low-residency program in 2017. After founding Frontier Poetry in that same year, Joshua went on to become the Editorial Director of Discover New Art and helped launch several more literary magazines and platforms, publishing many books by incredible artists, serving writers of every genre and style. Joshua Roark’s book of sonnets about teaching middle school as a Teach for America teacher, Put One Hand Up, Lean Back, was published by Unsolicited Press. In addition to his poetry, Joshua is a screenwriter and film producer in Los Angeles and most recently produced Dead Deer High, a feature film based on his original screenplay.

Michael Zendejas is the Senior Hybrid Acquisitions Editor for Abode Press. He received a Fiction MFA at University of Massachusetts Amherst and runs the film blog, The Chicano Film Shelf. An inaugural recipient of the Rose Fellowship, a Juniper Fellow, a 2022 winner of the James W. Foley Memorial Prize, and a member of the inaugural cohort of the Emerging Writers Fellowship, he consults and teaches classes on fiction, poetry and screenwriting via GrubStreet. His work is featured or forthcoming in: Stanchion, North American Review, Latin@ Literatures, and elsewhere.

participants receive:

• a 2-3 page feedback letter from an editor with specific suggestions and developmental edits, as well as suggestions for places of submission;
• access to 12 mini master class lessons (each around 20 minutes or under) from our guest instructors: “Repetitions” by Joanna Acevedo, “Formal poetry: nothing to fear, lots to delight in” by Sarah Van Arsdale, “Thoughts on Title in Poetry” by V. B. Borjen, “Deepening Emotional Subtext” by Flower Conroy, “Poetry Zine & Chapbook” by Kenna DeValor, “Ghazal” by Rebecca Evans, “Writing through one’s own grief and constructing cinematic narrative, intense emotion, and meaning in poetry” by Anthony Gedell, “Accessibility vs. Mystery” by Marcella Haddad, “Revision Strategies” by Laura S. Marshall, “Atmosphere and Texture in Poetry” by Joseph Omoh Ndukwu, “Putting a Chapbook Together” by Joshua Roark, and “Line Breaks” by Michael Zendejas;
• and one free submission in a forthcoming Palette Poetry contest.

Feedback letters will be received no later than the end of September. Early submissions may yield earlier feedback.

submission guidelines:

• Please submit one poem if you are requesting a single letter ($99), and up to three poems if you are selecting the three-letter option ($199). All submissions must be under 10 pages.
• Your poems must be submitted via Submittable, our online submissions manager, between July 7, 2025, and August 3, 2025.
• Multiple submissions are permitted, but each must be submitted separately with a new fee.
• Submissions are open internationally to any poet writing in English. However, some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
• Please include a brief cover letter that shares your bio, any applicable content warnings, as well as ideas or questions you’d like to address with your editor. To safeguard our reading staff, please include content warnings in the cover letter, if applicable, as well.
• Review our FAQ page for more information.
• If you haven’t already, please verify your email address with Submittable for more consistent communication.
• We are not seeking AI-generated work at this time. Please submit original work.

Dear poets,
The 2019 Diversity in Publishing survey found that, on average, 80% of decision-makers in the publishing industry are white. This inevitably creates systematized discrimination in terms of who gets published—without active and deliberate measures, people of color will continue to be marginalized. Important, innovative voices will continue to be passed over and dismissed.
We at Palette Poetry hope to use our platform to actively begin demolishing the discriminatory systems that pervade the publishing industry.  To that end, we welcome Black writers, Indigenous writers, and writers of color (BIPOC) to submit through this category for a quick decision made directly by the editors. We'll do our best to return a decision on your poetry within 2-4 weeks.


Sending every good wish your way,
The Palette Poetry team


Guidelines:

• Submissions of unpublished poems are open internationally, for historically marginalized BIPOC writers ONLY. 
• We accept simultaneous submissions, but please send us a message via Submittable if your work is picked up elsewhere.
• Submissions must be no more than 5 poems and must not exceed 10 pages.
• We do not accept multiple submissions. Please submit all your poems in ONE document.
• Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history, if any.
• Expect 2-4 weeks for a response.
• Publication in our Featured Poetry series includes a $50 per poem payment.