Now accepting submissions for the 2013 Susan K. Collins Poetry Chapbook Competition

The Susan K. Collins Poetry Chapbook contest (formerly the Mississippi Valley Poetry Chapbook Competition) annually invites submissions for a chapbook collection of poetry to be published by the MWC Press. Submissions must be postmarked between May 1 and August 31. Past winners have included Stephen Frech (2008, went on to win the 2011 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize from the New England Poetry Club), Meghan Brinson (2009), Ryan Walsh (2010), Sandra Marchetti (Regional 2011), Monica Wendel (National 2011), and
Cindy Hunter Morgan (2012).

Stephen Frech's chapbook 
The Dark Villages of Childhood

went on to win the
2011 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize
from the New England Poetry Club.

Contest Rules
Submit between 16 to 24 pages of poetry; manuscripts should be paginated and secured with a binder clip (no staples). No names should appear on the poems. Enclose two cover pages: first includes chapbook title, author’s name, address, phone, and email address. The second includes only the chapbook title to allow for blind review.

No cover letter is required; however, if poems have been previously published, an acknowledgment page should be included. Poems may be more than one page in length, but only one poem per page. Winners will be posted online in late November or early December.

Midwest Writing Center will publish and make the winning chapbook available for sale. No manuscripts will be returned. Submissions that arrive ‘postage due’ will be returned unopened.

Contact/Submission Information
Submissions should be sent directly to Midwest Writing Center. If you wish to receive written notification of the contest results please include a self-addressed , stamped envelope. All entries that also include (optional) a 6x9 self- addressed envelope with $2.50 in postage will receive a complimentary copy of the winning chapbook. Contact the contest administrators with any questions by emailing mwc@midwestwritingcenter.org with the word “chapbook:” in the subject line. 

Prizes
The winners of the Mississippi Valley Poetry Chapbook Contest will receive $100 prize money, have their manuscripts published by Midwest Writing Center, and receive 15 free copies of the finished chapbook.

Reading Fee
There is a $15 reading fee per chapbook entry (multiple submissions accepted). If paying reading fee by check, make check payable to MWC and include payment with the manuscript submission to:

Midwest Writing Center
Susan K. Collins Poetry Chapbook Contest
225 E. 2^nd St., Suite 303
Davenport, IA  52801

Pay via PayPal on the contest’s web page and MasterCard and Visa are also accepted. Please send your name as it appears on the card, the card number, expiration date, and v-code along with your manuscript.

Restrictions
As a member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and CLMP's community of independent literary publishers, Midwest Writing Center believes that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, friends, relatives, and/or past or current students of judges have been deemed ineligible to enter this contest, as have past and current board members and employees of the Midwest Writing Center.



"The Sinks" now available at the MWC!

The Sinks by Ryan Walsh is now available for purchase at the Midwest Writing Center. The Sinks was the winning entry in the 2010 Mississippi Valley Poetry Chapbook Contest.

Ryan Walsh grew up in Elkins, West Virginia. He graduated from Warren Wilson College and holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His poems have appeared in Ecotone, FIELD, Green Mountains Review, Narrative Magazine, Southern Poetry Review, among others, and he serves on the editorial board of Q Ave Press, makers of handmade poetry chapbooks. Each spring, he teaches in the University of Michigan's New England Literature Program in Maine.

Reviews for The Sinks:
 "A prayer for transformation for recognition that even humans, those creatures of 'marbled meat / and water,' are part of the land: we are crops, 'lithe, bright grasses." - Jennifer Perrine

"In language rich and sinewy, with a terse energy and an evocative music, Ryan Walsh establishes his mastery as a poet of place. Like Richard Hugo, James Wright, Philip Levine, or Seamus Heaney before him, he embraces a love of the elemental, of earth and weather and landscape, of rural people and working-class life. Always accessible, bristling with sensual clarity, his poems nevertheless retain a sense of mystery and enigma that teases the reader into thought. As a line from Walsh's wonderfully celebratory poem "In the Frame of Innings, Pendleton County, W. Va." suggests, "What else to do but tip my hat / and marvel?"  - Ronald Wallace

"For Ryan Walsh, a pursuit of the Divine isn't possible without investigating the hard truths of landscape and the limitations of the body. Line by line, the music in The Sinks is arresting. The beauty here is boiled down to an essential and distinctly American voice. These poems hover in space between the pastoral and elegy. As if in a wind stripped field, the reader is invited to stand shoulder to shoulder with these speakers, searching for a vocabulary to ground the  grandeur of a Midwestern horizon."  - Amaud Jamaul Johnson