Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize Policies and Procedures
Deadline: Midnight (EST) on December 1, 2025
Submission Fee: $29
Judge: A.E. Stallings
Winners receive:
● $3000 paid upon receipt of the signed contract in May 2026
● Publication by Waywiser Books in Spring 2027
● A public reading at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. in Spring 2027
Submit
Submissions can be made through Submittable from September 1 through December 1. Questions can be directed to waywiserbooks@gmail.com.
Eligibility
- Entrants must be at least 18 years of age.
- Entrants should not have published more than one full-length previous collection of poems, though they may have published an unlimited number of books belonging to other genres.
- Individual poems from the collection may have been published in: (a) magazines, journals, or anthologies; (b) chapbooks and pamphlets of 36 pages or less (the count to include poems and exclude back and front matter); or (c) self-published items of 32 pages or less (the count to include poems and exclude back and front matter).
- Manuscripts should be in English, and the original work of the entrant, though as much as one sixth of the manuscript may consist of public domain translations (i.e. translations from poems whose authors have been dead for 70+ years).
- Entrants must be willing to read from their collections in Washington D.C. in the spring of 2026, if they are chosen as the winner.
- Entrants may submit the manuscript elsewhere simultaneously but should immediately notify Waywiser of its withdrawal from the competition if it is accepted for publication by another organization.
Guidelines
- Manuscript must be a single PDF file. Please do not lock the file you submit.
- The author's name and contact details (i.e. physical address, phone number, and email) should appear on the front page of the manuscript and nowhere else.
- Manuscript should be between 48 and 88 pages excluding back and front matter.
- Use 11- or 12-point font on a standard document size.
- Number pages consecutively, including a table of contents and a list of acknowledgements where appropriate.
- The file name must include your full name and the title of your manuscript. For example, if your manuscript is titled The Waste Land, it should be uploaded as Last name First name The Waste Land.
- A list of previous poetry book, chapbook, or pamphlet publications should be included, and with it a list of the magazines in which you have had poems published.
No illustrative material should be sent.
After Submission
- Once submitted, a manuscript may not be altered.
- Entrants who reach the semi-finals of the contest should be able to send Waywiser a hard copy of their manuscript, and this copy, stripped of anything that would identify the author, should otherwise correspond in every particular to the original.
Reminders
● Submission fees are non-refundable.
● Waywiser cannot accept responsibility for missing submissions.
● If the judge is not satisfied that a high enough standard has been met, Waywiser reserves the right not to award the prize in a particular year.
Editorial Policy/Hecht Contest Process
● The judge is announced publicly in advance of the contest opening. Students, former students, and close friends of the judge are ineligible for the prize and asked not to submit. Please note: This editorial policy is a change from previous years, when the judge was not announced until the winner had been chosen.
● Manuscripts are read by an informal committee of editorial board members and Hecht Prize readers. All members of the board are connected to Waywiser as authors, and many of our readers are former Hecht Prize winners. We all have a deep commitment to the press and the prize, and to the dignity of contestants. We read each manuscript with respect and care.
● Each manuscript is read by two readers. At this stage, readers and board members recuse themselves from reading any manuscripts from students, former students, or close friends.
● Readers and board members each recommend a smaller number of manuscripts to go forward as semi-finalists. The director of the Hecht prize facilitates this process.
● The editorial board reads all the semi-finalists and determines which manuscripts will go forward as finalists to the judge. At this stage, board members will read semi-finalist manuscripts from students, former students, or close friends, but they will generally recuse themselves from formally voting on whether those manuscripts go forward to the final judge.
● Finalists are notified and asked to resubmit their manuscripts stripped of all identifying author information. Manuscripts then go to the final judge.
● Once the judge reaches a decision, the director of the Hecht Prize is notified, as is the editorial board, and the director notifies the winner. Once the winner has confirmed the manuscript is still available and eligible for the prize, the press makes the results public to the public and other contestants.