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The Academy of American Poets Prize

Since 1979, ������ϲ�����'s Creative Writing Program has participated in the annual Academy of American Poets' University & College Poetry Prize. This contest is open to both graduate and undergraduate students. Each year, one graduate and one undergraduate poet will have poems advanced to the national contest. If either of the winning poets is 23 or younger, they will also be considered for the , with a monetary prize of $1000.

Our 2024 contest will be judged by poet  

Leah Umansky is an educator, curator, collagist and  writer in New York City. She is the author of three full-length collections of poetry: Of Tyrant, out on Word Works Books (April 2024), The Barbarous Century, Domestic Uncertainties, and two chapbooks, Straight Away the Emptied World and the Mad-Men inspired Don Dreams and I Dream. Umansky earned her BA in English/ Creative Writing from SUNY ������ϲ�����, her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and her MA in English Education from Hunter college. She has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. Her creative work can be found in The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, USA Today, POETRY, and American Poetry Review. She has taught workshops to writers of all ages in such places as The Poetry School (UK), Hudson Valley Writers Center, and Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Visible Ink Program.  She can be found at @lady_bronte on twitter or @leah.umansky on IG

Eligibility

The competition is open to all current graduate and undergraduate students at ������ϲ����� University.

2023 Winners

������ϲ�����'s Academy of American Poets Prize 2023 winners were  AJ White (graduate) for and Elizabeth Plantin (undergraduate), “195th Street”

Past Winners:

2021: Hannah Nathanson (undergraduate) for and Cole Depuy (graduate), for Honorable Mentions went to Kaye Crawford (graduate) for “Mythobiographic Imaginorigin” and Madeline Timerman for “Nursery Rhyme for a Lonely Moon.”

Submission of Work

• Submissions can include up to three poems, and should not exceed 5 pages in total. Each poet can submit only once annually. Previously published poems are acceptable. This information does not need to be included in the original submission, but if the program selects a poem as the winner, the publication information should be noted on the file we send on to the Academy.
• Poets should save their submissions as a one-to-five page Word document (a .doc or .docx file) with a title consisting of the writer's initials and "academyPrize2023." (For instance, if a poet's name is Charles Nelson Reilly, the file name should be "CNRacademyPrize2023.docx.") The poems will go into a composite file before the judge reads them, so this titling scheme will not compromise the poets' anonymity. The poet's name should not appear anywhere else on the manuscript.
• Submissions should be emailed to cwpro@binghamton.edu by 11:59pm Eastern Time on Monday,  April 15th 2024. The subject heading should read "ACADEMY PRIZE SUBMISSION," and the body of the email should include the following information:
  • The poet's name
  • Age (specifically whether they are above or below 23, to determine eligibility for the Most Promising Young Poets Award)
  • Whether the poet is a graduate or undergraduate student
  • Mailing address
  • Contact phone number
  • Email address
  • A list of the title(s) of the poem(s) included in the submission. 
  • Poets may also note in the body of the email if their submissions have been published, but that information should not be in the attached file itself.