2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize
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The Rattle Chapbook Prize is an entirely separate category from the others listed at Submittable, and because of the nature of the contest, some of the rules are different. Please read the following rules very carefully.
1) The $30 entry fee is a one-year subscription to Rattle (or a one-year extension for subscribers) at our regular rate. New subscriptions will start with the next season's issue. Current subscribers will receive a one-year extension. Due to shipping costs, international entries will receive a 3/4 subscription (three mailings) instead of the full year.
2) Three winners, judged by the editors of Rattle in an anonymized review, will receive $5,000 and 500 author copies of their chapbook, which will also be distributed to all of Rattle's 7,000+ subscribers along with issues of the magazine. At least one of the winners will be a poet who has not yet published a full-length book of poetry (more than 48 pages).
3) Open to writers, worldwide; poems must be written primarily in English (no translations unless your own). Individual poems may be previously published in any medium, but the manuscript as a whole must be unpublished as a collection. Do not include any poems that have been published in Rattle—if the chapbook includes poems that we have published, they may be added back before publication, but we cannot consider them during the anonymized review of this contest. If you have an open submission at Rattle that includes poems from the chapbook, you can add a note on that submission letting us know not to read it until after the judging of the chapbook contest is complete. Manuscripts may include visual art. Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please withdraw the submission immediately should the manuscript be accepted elsewhere.
4) Manuscripts may be 15 - 30 pages in length, not including front/back-matter, with any reasonable fonts or font sizes (12 pt, etc.). Don't worry about the formatting. Do not include any identifying information within the manuscript itself, or within the file-name. If any of the poems have been previously published, include an acknowledgments page. A table of contents and page numbering are nice, but optional.
5) Submit your manuscript in a SINGLE file containing all 15 - 30 pages of poetry. (File types: doc, docx, txt, rtf, pdf.) Multiple entries by a single poet are accepted, however each manuscript must be treated as a separate entry, each with an additional $30 fee. Each additional entry will add an extra year to your subscription. Contest entry fees are non-refundable and manuscripts cannot be edited after submission, so please be sure to upload your final versions of the manuscripts.
6) The winners will be announced on April 15, 2025. Unpublished individual poems from the manuscripts may also be offered standard publication in Rattle. Please remember to include an acknowledgments page so that we know which poems have already been published individually.
See the Rattle Chapbook Prize webpage for more information and a list of past winners.