Each year Persea Books commemorates poet-activist Lexi Rudnitsky by holding two book contests sponsored by the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Project, an organization founded to memorialize Lexi and to promote the type of meaningful poetry in which she so spiritedly believed.
First Book Prize
The Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize competition is open to self-identifying women who have yet to publish a full-length book of poems. The winner receives publication, an advance of $1,000.00, and publication of her collection by Persea.
In addition, the winner receives the option of an all-expenses-paid residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center, a renowned artists retreat housed in a fifteenth-century castle in Umbertide, Italy.
Submissions are accepted only via Submittable between September 1st and October 31st.
Submission and Eligibility Guidelines:
Entrants must be U.S. citizens and/or currently residing in the United States.
Submitted manuscripts should include a title page, including the title of the submission only, and a paginated table of contents. There should be no identifying material, acknowledgments, or thank-yous on the title page or elsewhere in the submission.
Submissions should be at least 48 pages of poetry, which must be primarily in English.
For the purposes of this contest, a previously published full-length book of poems is defined as a volume of more than 40 pages that has been made readily available through trade distribution (i.e. local and/or on-line booksellers, including Amazon.com).
Simultaneous submissions are accepted. Please withdraw your manuscript(s) from consideration immediately if you plan to publish it elsewhere.
The winner is chosen by an anonymous panel of judges and announced on Persea's web site in January.
Any questions about the contest or its guidelines should be emailed to poetry@perseabooks.com.
Editor’s Choice Award
The Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award competition is open to any poet who has previously published at least one full-length book of poems. The winner receives an advance of $2,000.00 and publication of their collection by Persea.
Submissions to the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award should be made via Submittable between January 1st and March 15th.
Submission Guidelines:
Entrants must be U.S. Citizens and/or currently residing in the United States.
Submitted manuscripts should include a title page, including the title of the submission only and a paginated table of contents. There should be no identifying material or thank-yous on the title page or elsewhere in the submission.
Submissions should be at least 48 pages of poetry, which must be primarily in English.
New & Selected Poems and Collected Poems are not eligible.
For the purposes of this contest, a previously published full-length book of poems is defined as a volume of more than 40 pages that has been made readily available through trade distribution (i.e. local and/or on-line booksellers, including Amazon.com).
Simultaneous submissions are accepted. Please withdraw your manuscript(s) from consideration immediately if you plan to publish it elsewhere.
The winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award is chosen by Persea’s poetry editors in consultation with an Advisory Committee of the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Project. The winner will be announced on Persea’s web site in April.
NB: No one who has been a graduate student or faculty member in the English Department at the University of Missouri (Columbia) since 2008 is eligible for this award.
Winners
The Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry
2023 Raisa Tolchinsky, Glass Jaw
2022 Shawn R. Jones, Date of Birth
2021 Anni Liu, Border Vista
2020 Sarah Matthes, Town Crier
2019 Sara Wainscott, Insecurity System
2018 Valencia Robin, Ridiculous Light
2017 Emily Van Kley, The Cold and the Rust
2016 Molly McCully Brown, The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded
2015 Kimberly Grey, The Opposite of Light
2014 Susannah Nevison, Teratology
2013 Leslie Shinn, Inside Spiders
2012 Allison Seay, To See the Queen
2011 Laura Cronk, Having Been an Accomplice
2010 Cynthia Marie Hoffman, Sightseer
2009 Alexandra Teague, Mortal Geography
2008 Tara Bray, Mistaken for Song
2007 Anne Shaw, Undertow
2006 Alena Hairson, The Logan Topographies
The Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award
2023 Allison Blevins, Where Will We Live if the House Burns Down
2022 Stacie Cassarino, Each Luminous Thing
2021 Sarah Carson, How to Baptize a Child in Flint, Michigan
2020 Christopher Salerno, The Man Grave
2019 Enid Shomer, Shoreless
2018 Cameron Awkward-Rich, Dispatch
2017 Gary Young, That’s What I Thought
2016 Heather Derr-Smith, Thrust
2015 Karen Donovan, Your Enzymes Are Calling the Ancients
2014 Shane McCrae, The Animal Too Big to Kill
2013 Caki Wilkinson, The Wynona Stone Poems
2012 Michael White, Vermeer in Hell
2011 Mitchell L. H. Douglas, \blak\ \al-fə bet\
2010 Amy Newman, Dear Editor
About Lexi Rudnitsky
Lexi Rudnitsky (1972–2005) grew up outside of Boston. She studied at Brown University and Columbia University, where she wrote poetry and cultivated a profound relationship with a lineage of women poets that extends from Muriel Rukeyser to Heather McHugh. Her own poems exhibit both a playful love of language and a fierce conscience. Her writing appeared in The Antioch Review, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Pequod, and The Western Humanities Review. In 2004, she won the Milton Kessler Memorial Prize for Poetry from Harpur Palate. She is the author of a book of poems, A Doorless Knocking into Night (Mid-List Press, 2005).
Tax deductible contributions to The Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Project should be mailed to:
The Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Project, c/o Persea Books, 90 Broad Street, Suite 2100, New York, New York, 10004