Submissions for the 2026 Coniston Prize will be open between June 1 and August 1, 2026.
About
The Coniston Prize is an annual award that recognizes an exceptional group of poems by a woman writing in English. Any poet who identifies as a woman is eligible.
2026 Judge
We are honored to announce that renowned poet Carolyn Forché will judge the 13th annual Coniston Prize!
Carolyn Forché is the author of five books of poetry, most recently In the Lateness of the World (Penguin Press, 2020), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and also Blue Hour (2004), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Angel of History (1995), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award, The Country Between Us (1982), winner of the Lamont Prize of the Academy of American Poets, and Gathering the Tribes (1976), winner of the Yale Series of Young Poets Prize.
She is also the author of a prose book, What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (Penguin Press, 2019), winner of Juan E. Mendez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America and a finalist for the National Book Award. Her anthology, Against Forgetting, has been praised by Nelson Mandela as “itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice.” She was one of the first poets to receive the Windham Campbell Prize from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and in 1998 in Stockholm, she received the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award.
She has translated the poetry of Claribel Alegría, Robert Desnos, Lasse Söderberg, Fernando Valverde and Mahmoud Darwish. She has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and in 1990, Lannan Foundation. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an international member of the Royal Society of Literature (UK). She is Distinguished University Professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She lives in Maryland with her husband, photographer Harry Mattison.
Past Winners & Judges
2025: Bo Hee Moon, selected by Diane Seuss
2024: Nina C. Pelaez, selected by January Gill O’Neill
2023: Adrie Rose, selected by Ellen Bass
2022: Amy Miller, selected by Dorianne Laux
2021: Grace MacNair, selected by Yona Harvey
2020: Laura Villareal, selected by Ada Limón
2019: Quinn Lewis, selected by Kim Addonizio
2018: Erin Malone, selected by Martha Rhodes
2017: Emily Viggiano Saland, selected by Dorothea Lasky
2016: Sarah Ann Winn, selected by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
2015: Alexandra Lytton Regalado, selected by Lynn Emanuel
2014: Flower Conroy, selected by Mary Biddinger
Guidelines
The winner of the Coniston Prize will receive $1,000, and up to 10 finalists will also be awarded $175. The winner and all finalists’ poems will be featured in the October Coniston Prize Issue.
Submissions are open June 1 - August 1. (Submissions will close at 11:59 PM ET on August 1.) We notify all entrants before October 1. The entry fee is $20.
*BIPOC poets submit free during our special submission window June 1 - June 8. If you wish to take advantage of this opportunity, please submit through the "BIPOC Poets" option in Submittable before June 8. After that time, paid submissions will continue to be open to all eligible poets. *
Submit 3-5 previously unpublished poems, totaling no more than 10 pages, in a single document through our submissions manager. You may include a cover letter and brief bio in the comments box. Multiple submissions are acceptable with additional reading fee.
This award recognizes an exceptional group of poems. We therefore suggest that you submit poems that are intentionally cohesive in some way, whether connected by subject matter, theme, voice, style, or imagery.
Please remove all identifying information from the poems themselves. All contest submissions will be read anonymously.
Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but we cannot refund contest fees if you have to withdraw all or part of your submission. Multiple entries are acceptable with an additional fee.
Eligibility
The Coniston Prize is awarded to women poets. Any poet who identifies as a woman is eligible.
If you know the editors or our judge personally, you should not submit your work. This includes current or former students of the editors or the judge. If such a relationship is identified, your entry will be disqualified. If you are unsure whether your relationship would make you ineligible, query us: radarpoetry (at) gmail (dot) com.
Coniston Prize entries are read and judged anonymously. If the editors, or the judge, might recognize your poems, you are not eligible to submit.
Process
Each year, the editors first read all Coniston Prize submissions without viewing any personal information (name, cover letter, or bio). From these submissions, the editors select the finalists. The finalists’ manuscripts, free of any identifying information, are then sent to the contest judge, who selects a winner.
Please click below to submit. We look forward to reading your poems!
Code of Ethics
We adhere to the CLMP Contest Code of Ethics.
CLMP’s community of independent literary publishers believe 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.