Awards
Annual Awards
The PSA's Annual Awards are among the most prestigious honors available to poets. They offer emerging and established poets recognition at all stages of their careers, including our student poetry award and book awards for publishers.
Poetry Society of America Book Award
Norma Farber First Book Award, $500
For a first book of original poetry written by a living author who lives in the United States or is a U.S. citizen. The book must be published in either a hard or soft cover in a standard edition in 2024. Translations are ineligible, as are chapbooks. A $500 cash prize goes to the author.
Judge
Phillip B. Williams is the author of the poetry collection Thief in the Interior (2016), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award; the chapbooks Burn (2013) and Bruised Gospels (2011); and the novel Ours (2024). A Cave Canem graduate, Williams is the recipient of a Whiting Award and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship. He is coeditor of the online journal Vinyl and teaches at Bennington College.
Established by the family and friends of Norma Farber, poet and author of children's books.
William Carlos Williams Award, $500
For a book of poetry written by a living author who lives in the United States or is a U.S. citizen. The book must be published by a small press, non-profit, or university press in a standard edition in 2024. Translations are ineligible, as are chapbooks. A $500 cash prize goes to the author.
Judge
David Baker is the author or editor of nineteen books, including thirteen books of poetry, most recently Whale Fall (2022, W. W. Norton), Swift: New and Selected Poems (2019, W. W. Norton), Scavenger Loop (2015, W. W. Norton) and Never-Ending Birds (2009, W. W. Norton), which was awarded the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize in 2011, and six books of prose, most recently Seek After: On Seven Modern Lyric Poets (2018, SFASU).
Endowed by the family and friends of Geraldine Clinton Little, a poet and author of short stories and former vice-president of the PSA.
Submission Details
- Books must be submitted directly by publishers.
- There is a $20 entry fee per book
- Publishers must submit 2 copies of each title.
- No book may be submitted to both contests.
- Books should be sent via USPS.
- Submissions from Poetry Society employees, officers, advisory board committee members, or their immediate families are ineligible.
Mailing Address
Poetry Society of America
119 Smith Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Four Quartets Prize
The Four Quartets Prize is for a unified and complete sequence of poems published in America in a print or online journal, chapbook, or book.
Chapbook Fellowships
Launched in 2003, the PSA's Chapbook Program publishes each winner's work as a gorgeous chapbook, allowing new voices to reach new audiences.
Frost & Shelley Awards
The Frost Medal and Shelley Memorial Award recognize lifetime and mid-career achievement in poetry. By nomination only.