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The Lumiere Review is back with our annual Writing Contest! We accept both poems and prose (fiction, nonfiction) from all writers. That said, we particularly encourage emerging writers, as well as those who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQIA, disabled, or other marginalized groups to submit to our contest. We will actively promote writers with these backgrounds.
We seek submissions that have electrifying and inventive narratives, honest and visceral language, and a distinguished sense of craft.
Details
Submissions are accepted from January 1, 2022 to January 31, 2022, 11:59pm EST. All submissions will be considered for publication in ISSUE 08. We accept entries from previous contributors and submitters.
We will choose one winner each for POETRY and PROSE. They will each receive a $100 prize, publication in our magazine, and our greatest admiration. Runner-ups will receive $50. We will also be shortlisting a few finalists in each category whose works will also be published. All selected work will be eligible for nominations in Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, The Pushcart Prize, and other nominations, given they are not previously published. Check out the previous winners and finalists here.
Our staff editors will select an anonymous longlist of poetry and prose to send to our contest judges, who will select the winners and finalists. Read more about our judges (Luther Hughes and Elaine Hsieh Chou). We hope to notify winners and finalists by mid March.
The contest is free for all and you may submit ONE prose piece and/or ONE poem. You may submit once in each category. To keep our contest sustainable and to compensate our judges, we’d appreciate a donation to our GoFundMe.
How to Submit
All contest submissions should be sent through the POETRY FORM or PROSE FORM. We understand that this may not be the most accessible to all writers, and if using the form proves to be a barrier, please email us at [email protected]. We are open to general submissions as well, and you may enter the contest and submit for our general submissions window provided that the pieces submitted are different.
Prose and poetry submissions should be attached to the form as a single Word or PDF document. There is no length restriction on poetry, and prose should be under 3,000 words. A 3rd person biography is required.
We encourage simultaneous submissions. Do let us know if an unpublished piece has been accepted elsewhere. We also accept previously published work as long as you have the rights to them (and that you provide us with details on which publication to credit).
Do NOT include any identifying information on the document, including name, contact information, biographies, etc. Any submissions with such information will be disqualified.
2022 Judges
Luther Hughes – Poetry Judge
Luther Hughes is the author of the debut poetry collection, A Shiver in the Leaves, forthcoming from BOA Editions in September 2022, and the chapbook Touched (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018). He is the founder of Shade Literary Arts, a literary organization for queer writers of color, and co-hosts The Poet Salon podcast with Gabrielle Bates and Dujie Tahat. Recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize, his writing has been published in various magazines, journals, and newspapers. Luther was born and raised in Seattle, where he currently lives.
Elaine Hsieh Chou – Prose Judge
Elaine Hsieh Chou is a Taiwanese American writer from California. A 2017 Rona Jaffe Foundation Graduate Fellow at NYU and a 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow, her short fiction appears in Black Warrior Review, Guernica, Tin House Online and Ploughshares. Her debut novel Disorientation comes out March 22, 2022 from Penguin Press. Find her at @elainehsiehchou.
Past Judges
Yanyi (POETRY JUDGE ’21) is a writer and critic. He is the author of Dream of the Divided Field (One World Random House, forthcoming 2022) and The Year of Blue Water (Yale University Press 2019), winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry, and named one of 2019’s Best Poetry Books by New York Public Library. His work has been featured in NPR’s All Things Considered, Tin House, Granta, and A Public Space, and he is the recipient of fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Poets House. Currently, he is poetry editor at Foundry and giving creative advice at The Reading. Find out more at yanyiii.com.
Cathy Linh Che (POETRY JUDGE ’21) is the author of Split (Alice James Books), winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Best Poetry Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. Her work has been published in The New Republic, McSweeney’s, and Poetry. She has received awards from MacDowell, Djerassi, The Anderson Center, The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Artist Trust, Hedgebrook, Poets House, Poets & Writers, The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, The Asian American Literary Review, The Center for Book Arts, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Residency, the Jerome Foundation. She has taught at the 92nd Street Y, New York University, Fordham University, Sierra Nevada College, and the Polytechnic University at NYU. She was Sierra Nevada College’s Distinguished Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence. She serves as Executive Director at Kundiman and lives in Queens.
Elle Nash (PROSE JUDGE ’21) is the author of the novel Animals Eat Each Other (Dzanc Books), which was featured in the 2018 June Reading Room of O – The Oprah Magazine and hailed by Publishers Weekly as a ‘complex, impressive exploration of obsession and desire.’ A small collection of stories, Nudes, is forthcoming from SF/LD Books in 2021. Her short stories and essays appear in Guernica, The Nervous Breakdown, Literary Hub, The Fanzine, Volume 1 Brooklyn, New York Tyrant and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and a fiction editor at Hobart Pulp. She teaches a writing workshop called Textures.
In order to fund our contest, we’d appreciate it if you made a donation to our fundraiser.