The 2021 SFPA Speculative Poetry Contest is taking entries through August 31. The contest is open to all poets, including non-SFPA-members. Prizes will be awarded for best unpublished poem in three categories:

• Dwarf (poems 1–10 lines [prose poems 0–100 words])
• Short (11–49 lines [prose poems 101–499 words])
• Long (50 lines and more [prose 500 words and up])

Line count does not include title or stanza breaks. All sub-genres of speculative poetry are allowed in any form. Winners will be announced October 1.

The prizes in each category (Dwarf, Short, Long) will be $150 First Prize, $75 Second Prize, $25 Third Prize. The first through third place poems will be published on the SFPA website. There is an entry fee of $3 per poem.

The contest judge is Sheree Renée Thomas, award-winning fiction writer, poet, and editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She has authored a prose collection, two multigenre/hybrid collections, and edited the World Fantasy-winning groundbreaking black speculative fiction Dark Matter anthologies. She also is the associate editor Obsidian: Literature & the Arts in the African Diaspora.  

The 2021 contest chair is Josh Brown.

Entries are read blind. Unpublished poems only. Author retains rights, except that first through third place winners will be published on the SPFA website. Full guidelines here.

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