SuBMISSION GUIDELINES

COUNTERCLOCK Emerging Writer’s Awards

From October 25th–December 10th*, submit your poetry
and prose to our Emerging Writer’s Awards. Winners and runner-ups will be notified in mid-February. Winners in each genre will receive $100 and publication.

*DEADLINE EXTERNDED TO DECEMBER 30th!

2023 CCWA Judges

Emily Pittinos | Poetry Co-Judge

Emily Pittinos is a Great Lakes poet and essayist currently teaching in Providence, RI. Pittinos has received a 2022 Literature Fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, as well as support from Vermont Studio Center, the Alexa Rose Foundation, and Washington University in St. Louis, where she served as the Senior Fellow in Poetry. Her recent work appears, or will soon appear, in Academy of American Poets’ poem-a-day, Poetry Society of America, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, The Last Unkillable Thing (University of Iowa Press, Spring 2021), is a winner of the 2020 Iowa Poetry Prize and a finalist for a 2022 Midwest Book Award. Her short collection of creative nonfiction, Animal, Roadkill, Ashes, Gone (essays), is forthcoming from Bull City Press this November. 

William Fargason | Poetry Co-Judge

William Fargason is the author of Love Song to the Demon-Possessed Pigs of Gadara (University of Iowa Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 Iowa Poetry Prize and the 2020 Florida Book Award in Poetry (Gold Medal). His poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, The Cincinnati Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. His nonfiction has appeared in Brevity, The Offing, and elsewhere.  He earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and a PhD in poetry from Florida State University, where he taught creative writing. He was the former poetry editor at Split Lip Magazine. He lives with himself in Towson, Maryland.

Ghinwa Jawhari | Prose Co-Judge

Ghinwa Jawhari is the author of the chapbook 'BINT' (2021), which was selected by Aria Aber for Radix Media's Own Voices Chapbook Prize. Her poetry, essays, and fiction appear in The Margins, Mizna, Catapult, Narrative, The Adroit Journal, SPEAK, and elsewhere. She was a 2021 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and she is the founding editor of Koukash Review. www.ghinwajawhari.com

Zeynep Özakat | Prose Co-Judge

Zeynep Özakat was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. Her writing has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, where she won the Fiction Open Contest, in Black Warrior Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and in Gulf Coast Online. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where she received The Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction, The Leonard Brown Prize in Poetry, and a Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Work. Most recently, she was a 2021-2022 Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

What We’re Looking For

We’re looking for narratives that distill and permutate, that oscillate and ebb, that translate, reposition, accelerate, and deviate from the fabric of the literary norm. Stories that coil on their haunches and meet our eyes, bright-gazed and alert in the dark. Words that question. Redefinition and recreation, swimming beneath the surface.

We are incredibly excited to read what you have prepared—and we hope, above all, you’ll write without inhibitions, and create work true to the narratives that are special and close to you.

From the judges:

“Poetry that doesn't do what it's told, that catches us changing our clothes with its sharp and hungry eye. A good poem is one that forces you to sit down, stare at it, and then leaves you to sit with / stare at yourself. Teach us something new, or remind us of something old. Hold the scope up to our face and point. Just don't hold back.” - Ghinwa Jawhari

“I am drawn to stories that know exactly who they are. Self-assured stories. Voices that deliberately carry me through.” - Zeynep Özakat

“I’m open to the mysterious, the playful, the concrete, the startling, the difficult, the strange, the clear, the inevitable, the new. Whatever the subject matter or style, I’m always hoping to come across a poem that is exploring innovative ways to enhance its content though its shape. In other words, I want to discover a poem that rings true not only in voice but through a form—whether experimental or inherited—that makes thoughtful decisions at every turn.” - Emily Pittinos

“I want honesty. I want music and story. I want to be reminded why we turn again and again to poetry. I want your best.” - William Fargason

Guidelines & Eligibility

All writers who have not yet published a full-length manuscript, chapbook, or collection or eligible to submit. You may only submit works that are previously unpublished, with the exception of writing published on social media or personal websites. We do not consider past experience, honors, or publications. All submissions will be read blindly.

There is no lower or upper limit for age.

We welcome submissions from all over the world.

All contest submissions will be considered for publication in COUNTERCLOCK Journal.

Applicants may submit to both categories, but must send their work in separate emails. Please click here for more information on sending in your application.