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With the blessing of Jake Adam York's family, SHR is proud to award an annual prize to the best poems of witness by a poet in the United States.
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S U B M I S S I O N P E R I O D : Check back for 2017 prize information.
E N T R Y F E E : $15
J U D G E : 2017 final judge to be announced.
P R I Z E S : First-place winner receives $1,000 and publication in SHR. Runners-up receive $100 each. Finalists are also named. All submissions will be considered for publication in SHR.
ABOUT JAKE ADAM YORK
AKE ADAM YORK was an award-winning poet, the celebrated author of four collections of poetry, a fifth-generation Alabamian, and an undergraduate alum of Auburn University. He first came to poetry working with the faculty of Auburn’s Department of English and went on to write poems that, with both love and anguish, examined race relations in the South, celebrating the triumphs of the Civil Rights movement and questioning, as a native son of the South, his own complicity in its tragedies. The earliest versions of these poems—which went on to garner numerous awards and publication honors—can be found in York’s senior thesis, written at Auburn and housed in our library.
Natasha Trethewey, a Pulitzer-Prize winning author and former Auburn professor of English, described York’s collection A Murmuration of Starlings as "a fierce, beautiful, necessary book. Fearless in their reckoning, these poems resurrect contested histories and show us that the past—with its troubled beauty, its erasures, and its violence—weighs upon us all . . . a murmuration so that we don't forget, so that no one disappears into history."
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York died unexpectedly of a stroke at the age of forty in the winter of 2012, leaving behind a body of work that bears witness to our difficult past, and, as all great poems of witness do, lights a way toward understanding. The Auburn Witness Poetry Prize honors not only York’s work, but also his deep and enduring commitment to his home and community in Alabama and Auburn.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Each entrant may submit up to three poems of witness. Your $15 entry fee can be paid via our secure online marketplace or by mail a check/money order to the following address:
Once your entry fee is received, your submission will be passed to our editors.
Every entrant will receive a copy of SHR featuring the prize-winning poems. The issue will be mailed to the address you provide while paying your entry fee. You may update your mailing address by contacting us at shr@auburn.edu. Submit your work via our online submission manager. You should enter your personal information into the required submission manager fields. Please include a brief cover letter with your submission, but do not include any personal information (name, mailing address, email, etc.) on your poems. All entries will be screened by SHR editors before being sent to a final judge. Submissions will be read blind after they are passed to the final judge. The final judge will select a first-place winner and any runners-up. SHR editors will select finalists. Entries must be previously unpublished. We accept simultaneous submissions. You may withdraw your submission at any time via our online submission manager—if you do so, you will still receive your copy of SHR. Questions about the contest should be addressed to Aaron Alford, Managing Editor, at shr@auburn.edu. R U L E S O F E L I G I B I L I T Y
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CLMP’s community of independent literary publishers believes that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. We believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, we agree to 1) conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors; 2) to provide clear and specific contest guidelines—defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and 3) to make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public. This Code recognizes that different contest models produce different results, but that each model can be run ethically. We have adopted this Code to reinforce our integrity and dedication as a publishing community and to ensure that our contests contribute to a vibrant literary heritage.
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PREVIOUS PRIZE WINNERS
2014 WINNERS ARE PUBLISHED IN SHR VOL 48.4 |
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2015 WINNERS ARE PUBLISHED
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