Essay Press / MFA Book Contest
Each year the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics sponsors a book contest with our friends at , which is dedicated to publishing artful, innovative, and culturally relevant prose.
The EP/56³Ô¹ÏÍøB MFA Book Contest publishes manuscripts that extend or challenge the formal possibilities of prose, including but not limited to: lyric essays and prose poems or poetics; experimental biography and autobiography; innovative approaches to journalism, interdisciplinary historiography, criticism, scholarship and philosophy. Simultaneous submissions, multiple submissions, collaborative manuscripts, digital and hybridized text/art manuscripts are all welcome.
The winner of the contest receives an award of $1,000, book publication by Essay Press, and travel expenses for an invited reading at 56³Ô¹ÏÍø Bothell. Our students interview the authors for publication online and have the chance to interact with them at events on and off-campus.
The contest opens each autumn and has rotating judges. For complete guidelines, please visit .
Previous winners
2022
Selected by Amaranth Borsuk
Jewel Box
Editors’ Choice Selection
2021
The was judged by Rondaldo V. Wilson.
Jade Lascelles
Violence Beside
The Bird Hat Wearer’s Journal
2020
The was judged by Renee Gladman.
To Love an Artist
2019
The was judged by Jill Magi and Ching-In Chen.
Silvina López Medin
Poem That Never Ends
(Photo credit: MartÃÂn Sonzogni)
Yanara Friedland
Groundswell
(Photo credit: Benjamin M Johnson)
2018
The was judged by Mary-Kim Arnold and Rebecca Brown.
Katherine Agyemaa Agard
of color
(Photo credit: Gabriel Woodham)
Kaia Preus
The War Requiem
(Photo credit: Amy Stockhaus)