Ninth Letter Literary Awards deadline extended to May 10. 

Submit by 11:59 p.m. CDT!

First prize is $1,000 for each genre (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction), print and web publication, and bragging rights! Every U.S. entrant receives a free, one-year print subscription per submission. International entrants will receive a complimentary copy of the fall/winter issue.

Literary Awards Submission Guidelines

Submissions are read anonymously, so neither the author’s name nor any identifying information should appear on the manuscript itself. If the author’s name appears in the poem, story, or essay, please replace with [Author’s Name] to maintain anonymity. Acceptable file formats are .pdf, .doc, .docx.

Poetry Guidelines

Please submit up to 5 poems in a single file of no more than 8 pages.

Prose Guidelines

Please submit one piece of no more than 8,000 words. You may also submit up to three pieces of flash-fiction or flash-nonfiction as long as the total word count of the submission is no more than 4,000 words.

Submission Fee

There is an $20 submission fee for each entry. All U.S. entrants will receive a one-year print subscription to Ninth Letter. All international entrants will receive a copy of the fall/winter print issue. Payments are accepted via Submittable.

Multiple Submissions

You are welcome to send multiple submissions in multiple categories provided a fee is paid for each entry. Should you submit more than once, your print subscription will be cumulative. For example, if you submit one manuscript to each poetry, fiction, and CNF, you will receive a three-year subscription.

You may also choose to gift any or all of your print subscriptions to another literary magazine fans of your choosing. If you’d like to gift any of your submissions, please fill out this Google Form after submitting, and our contest coordinator will manage the subscriptions. The Google Form is anonymous and will not collect your email.

Simultaneous Submissions

Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please withdraw your submission immediately upon acceptance elsewhere. For poetry and flash, please send a message via Submittable if withdrawing select pieces but not the entire manuscript. Due to logistical and labor considerations, neither refunds nor replacement submissions will be offered for withdrawn manuscripts. You will still receive the complimentary one-year subscription even if you have to withdraw your submission.

Prize

The winner in each genre (poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction) will receive $1,000, publication in the Fall/Winter print issue and online, two contributor’s copies of the print issue, and bragging rights. Ninth Letter acquires First North American Serial Rights (FNASR) only; all other rights are retained by the author. All submissions are considered for publication in our general issue and/or online.

Eligibility 

No current students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign or students associated with the school in the past five years are eligible to submit. Likewise, any entrants with a close relationship with guest judges are not eligible to submit.

Accessibility

If you require additional accessibility considerations, please email ninthletter9@gmail.com with the subject line “Contest Accessibility."

Guest Judges

Poetry

Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016), a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and the Norma Faber First Book Award. His third collection, This Elegance, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in Spring 2026. A Cave Canem fellow, he is the recipient of a Ron Wallace Poetry Fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, a Stegner Fellowship, and an Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship. He has had poems and essays commissioned by The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, The New Museum, Craft Contemporary, The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, The Brick (formerly LAXART), and The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.

Fiction

K-Ming Chang is a Lambda Literary Award winner, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and an O. Henry Prize Winner. She is the author of the New York Times Book Review Editors’ choice novel Bestiary (One World/Random House, 2020), which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the Otherwise Award. In 2021, her chapbook Bone House was published by Bull City Press. Her story collection Gods of Want (One World/Random House) won a Lambda Literary Award, and her books have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Korean, German, Turkish, and other languages. Her latest books are Organ Meats (One World, 2023) and a novella titled Cecilia (Coffee House Press, 2024). Her next two books, a horror novel and short story collection, are forthcoming from Simon & Schuster. Her writing is most frequently described as “not for everybody” and occasionally described as “for the freaks.”

Creative Nonfiction

Jane Wong is the author of the debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, out now from Tin House (2023). She is also the author of two books of poetry: How to Not Be Afraid of Everything from Alice James (2021) and Overpour from Action Books (2016). She holds an M.F.A in Poetry from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University. Her poems and essays can be found in places such as The New York Times, Best American Poetry 2015, The Kenyon Review, McSweeney’s, POETRY, and others. She grew up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey shore and lives in Seattle.

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