cow creek chapbook prize
the 2025 contest is officially open ...
​
We're happy to announce that we're now taking submissions for this year's chapbook contest! Have a small collection you're just aching to get out there?
​
The Cow Creek Chapbook Prize is a poetry chapbook contest brought to you by Pittsburg State University. We're open to all styles and subjects. As long as the poems challenge and capture the imagination, we want to see them. The winning poet will receive $1,000 and 25 author copies. The contest deadline is May 15, 2025.​​​​​​​
this year's judge:
​
rebecca gayle howell
credit: victoria marie bee
“In Standard Time, Dante Di Stefano proves that everything is poetry, from the sparrow outside your doorstep to the ‘sparrow / stuck inside a poet’s throat.’ These poems carry us past sorrow, trauma, and despair to the open hand of the ‘lyric-now’ ..."​
—Leah Umansky, author of The Barbarous Century and Of Tyrant
​
learn more​
Rebecca Gayle Howell is a writer, translator, and editor. Her Best Book of the Year honors include those from The Best Translated Book Awards, Foreword INDIES Awards, The Nautilus Awards, The Sexton Prize (U.K.), The Banipal Prize (U.K.), Ms. Magazine, Book Riot, The Rumpus, and Poets & Writers. Among her other honors are the United States Artists Fellowship, the Carson McCullers Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and two winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. In addition to publishing, Howell also collaborates with composer Reena Esmail to produce works for classical performance, including A Winter Breviary (Oxford University Press, 2022), an interfaith carol cycle regularly performed on three continents.
​
Howell serves on faculty for the University of Arkansas MFA in creative writing & translation. She frequently presents for communities like the Edinburgh Book Festival, the American Academy of Poets, No Kid Hungry, and the Galápagos International Poetry Festival, as well as wherever her work is taught. Her third collection of original poetry, Erase Genesis, will be released in September 2025 by Bridwell Press.​​
​​​​2025 contest guidelines:
​
Submit 15-30 pages of poetry with a $15 entry fee by May 15.
​
Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let us know if the chapbook is accepted elsewhere.
Multiple submissions are fine, but each chapbook must be submitted separately.
It’s fine if individual poems have been previously published or if one is accepted over the course of the contest, but the arrangement of poems must be an original work.
Submissions are read blind, so please don’t include your name or other identifying information anywhere on the manuscript.
Past or present students of Pittsburg State University and individuals directly connected to the judge are not eligible to submit.
directors:
​
Chase Dearinger
Peter Vertacnik
editorial staff:
​
Chloe Hanson
Taylor Johnson
Spencer Young
Winniebell Xinyu Zong
questions? contact us:
We subscribe to the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses Contest Code of Ethics. Guidelines and issues of conflict of interest can be found above. Part of that code is making our process transparent to the public. All chapbooks are initially read by the editorial staff. Exceptional chapbooks then go to a second round of readers, who narrow potential winners down to a limited number of finalists, which are sent to the guest judge for selection.