The Poetry Chapbook Prize
The winner of The Headlight Review’s 2024 Poetry Chapbook Prize Contest will receive publication (a perfectly bound book with a full color or black/white cover), an award of $500, and 25 copies of the book.
A list of finalists will be announced sixty days after the close of submissions. All manuscripts will be judged blindly. The finalists who make it through the first round will be judged by esteemed poet Valerie A. Smith.
The winning manuscript will be published within six months after the results of the competition are announced in April of 2024. Each judge’s favorite poem from their selected finalist will be highlighted at The Headlight Review.
October 1 - December 31, 2023
Submission Period
2023 Judge
Valerie A. Smith
Valerie A. Smith’s poetry collection, Back to Alabama, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in April 2024. She has a PhD from Georgia State University and a MA from Kennesaw State University where she teaches English. A Hambidge and Sewanee Writers Conference scholar, her poems have been published in Radix, Aunt Chloe, Weber, Spectrum, Obsidian, Crosswinds, Dogwood, Solstice, Oyster River Pages, Wayne Literary Review and on her website www.valeriesmithwriter.com. Above all, she values spending quality time with her family.
Guidelines
Eligibility: Employees and students at Kennesaw State University, both former and current, are not eligible to enter. Entrants must be at least 18 years of age or older.
Electronic submissions: The $18 entry fee is payable by debit/credit card via the KSU submission system, which you may find at the “Submit Your Manuscript” button at the bottom of this page. For $25 you can submit your manuscript and receive copies of the 3 previous winners.
Manuscript Submission Details
Size: Manuscripts must be between 24-36 pages, including cover page, table of contents and any acknowledgements.
Format: 12 pt. standard typeface, PDF only.
Title page: Should include the title of the manuscript and nothing else. No. identifying name or address is permitted in the manuscript.
Poems: Poems that have been published elsewhere must be acknowledged. Overall, the manuscript should be original and previously unpublished.
Multiple submissions: Are acceptable. Each submission requires a separate entry fee.
Simultaneous submissions: Are acceptable. Please inform us immediately upon acceptance elsewhere. Entry fees are nonrefundable.
Language: Entries must be written in the English language.
Illustrations: Are discouraged.
Translations: Are ineligible.
Comments: Will not be provided to non-winning entrants.
Editing: Will not be permitted once submitted.
Kennesaw State’s MA in Professional Writing Program (MAPW) endorses and abides by the Ethical Guidelines of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP). Our system for judging is transparent and blind. The first-round judges will receive and rate their choices in order, and this will create a list of finalists. The manuscript finalists will go to the finalist judge, who will then select the best among the finalists.
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Dr. ANIETIE ISONG (2020)
Dr. Anietie Isong has worked as a corporate writer for some of the biggest brands in the world. His first novel, Radio Sunrise, won the 2018 McKitterick Prize. His collection of short stories, Someone Like Me, published in 2020, won the first annual Headlight Review Chapbook Prize. In 2021, Isong’s essay was included in Of This Our Country, a ground-breaking anthology celebrating acclaimed Nigerian writers. He has spoken at the Aké Arts and Book Festival, Henley Literary Festival, Marlborough Literature Festival, among other literary festivals. Isong holds a PhD in New Media and Writing. Follow him on Twitter: @anietie_isong
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STUART ZIARNIK (2021)
Stuart Ziarnik is the author of the chapbook, The Vulture. A native of Connecticut, he lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and daughter. He is currently working on a novella. Visit stuartziarnik.com for more updates.
Book Reviews
“Ziarnik’s existential nightmare confirms all of our worst fears: that the cost of living is peace of mind. The Vulture expertly plumbs the nature of coincidence and meaning in an often meaningless world, offering, by way of its tightly constructed sentences and insights, the consolation of art.”
—Garrard Conley, author of Boy Erased, Truman Capote Fellow
Somehow both relatable and mysterious, The Vulture is a tightly written story of escalating tension, from its first sentence to its last. I not only couldn’t put it down, I couldn’t stop talking about it when I did. Ziarnik expertly blurs the lines between who we are with the lights on and those dark, frantic corners of our obsessive minds. It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything that so precisely captures how it feels to be alive right now, right here, today.”
—Anne Corbitt, author of Rules for Lying, John and Renee Grisham Fellow
“With fight-tight prose and a mastery of nuance reminiscent of Hitchcock, Ziarnik uses the metaphor of a vulture’s sudden and unexplained presence in the neighborhood to evoke the steady escalation of terror the world experienced in the Covid pandemic of 2020.”
—Melanie Sumner, author of How to Write a Novel, National Endowment of the Arts Fellow
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LISA ALLETSON (2022)
LISA ALLETSON (2022) Lisa Alletson grew up in South Africa and England, and now lives in Toronto. Her debut chapbook, Good Mother Lizard, won the Headlight Review 2022 poetry prize, and is included on The Lonely Crowd's 'Books of the Year’ list. Lisa’s writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best MicroFiction. Her words have been published in New Ohio Review, Crab Creek Review, Pithead Chapel, Gone Lawn, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, Typehouse Magazine, Emerge Journal, among others. She’s on Twitter at @LotusTongue. You can read more of her published work at www.lisaalletson.com.
Book Launch Virtual Reading: Part 1
Book Launch Virtual Reading: Part 2
Book Reviews
“In Good Mother Lizard, we encounter visceral poems written with a sharp precision and urgent transparency. Through these introspective yet accessible poems we empathize with the speaker’s sense of isolation, yet a fierce integrity of conscience also shines through. “I close my eyes. / Fall / as a / wet word / into the Namib desert,” writes Alletson in her dazzling debut collection. These are candid, vital poems which blaze through our eyes into our conscience, penetrating the landscape of our souls.”
— JOSE HERNANDEZ DIAZ, NEA Fellow and author of The Fire Eater
"Lisa Alletson writes as an archaeologist guide in twenty-seven stunning, often-surreal poems that feature unfolding life layers. Her mother tongue (and mother lizard) is authentic and honest throughout. In this award-winning debut collection, Alletson creates an unflinching, sensory field guide slash diary. Each poem entry is infused with her memorable imagination: a girl with quilted hands, cold planets in a throat, a dress and girl that are shadows, a rogue cotton sycophant, fog beetle performing a handstand, blue moth night brushed with sleeping pills, thrum and ashes.”
—AMY BARNES, author of Mother Figures and Ambrotypes
Good Mother Lizard doesn't back down from the challenges of motherhood, mental health issues, or the death of a sister and father. Instead, Lisa Alletson faces them head-on. Even when they "burn open her eyes" revealing "freckles are holes" and DNA is worn "like a casualty" she still savors how an apricot's stone is "tangled like jazz." For Lisa, finding beauty, no matter how devastating, is an act of defiant survival.
TINA MOZELLE BRAZIEL, Philip Levine prize-winner for Known by Salt