Literary Prizes

Three prizes of $1,500 each and publication in New Ohio Review are given annually for a poem or group of poems, a short story, and an essay.

Submit a story or essay of up to 20 pages or a poem or group of poems of up to 6 pages with a $22 entry fee, which includes a subscription to New Ohio Review, between January 15th and April 15th.

All entries are considered for publication.

Please see expanded guidelines on our Submittable page.

NORward Prizes in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry

New Ohio Review awards $750 annually for a poem or series of poems, a short story, and a piece of creative nonfiction submitted to the NORward contest in each genre. This contest is collectively judged by former contributors to New Ohio Review.

Submit a poem or group of poems up to 6 pages or prose up to 20 pages with a $21 entry fee between August 15th and November 15th.

All entries are considered for publication, the winner is published in an upcoming issue of NOR, and any poem that receives a first-place vote will be published on NOR’s website.

Please see expanded guidelines on our Submittable page.

The Ellis Prizes in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry

New Ohio Review awards $750 for a poem or series of poems, a short story, and a piece of creative nonfiction submitted in each genre. This contest is judged by alumni of Ohio University’s Creative Writing program. This year’s judges are Abigail Rose-Marie for Fiction, Patrick Madden for Nonfiction, and Brad Modlin for Poetry.

Submit a poem or group of poems up to 6 pages or prose up to 20 pages with a $21 entry fee between November 15th and January 14th.

All entries are considered for publication, the winner is published in an upcoming issue of NOR.

Please see expanded guidelines on our Submittable page.

Past Winners and Judges

Please click here to check out a list of the previous winners and judges.

2025 Literary Prize Judges

2025 Fiction Contest Judge

Deesha Philyaw

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. Deesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, a Baldwin for the Arts Fellow, a United States Artists Fellow, and co-host of two podcasts, Ursa Short Fiction (with Dawnie Walton) and Reckon True Stories (with Kiese Laymon). She is currently at work developing TV shows based on her short fiction.

Deesha’s debut novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, is forthcoming from Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, in 2026.

2025 Nonfiction Contest Judge

Kerri ní Dochartaigh

Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s first book, Thin Places, was published in Spring 2022 in the US. It was an Indies Introduce selection for Winter/Spring 2022, an Indie Next selection for April 2022, and A Junior Library Guild selection for Spring 2022. Cacophony of Bone is her second book. She lives on the west coast of Ireland with her family.

2025 Poetry Contest Judge

Ted Kooser

Ted Kooser is a former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner who lives in retirement in rural Nebraska.  His most recent collection of poems is Raft, from Copper Canyon Press 2024. Forthcoming from the University Press of Mississippi is Conversations with Ted Kooser, edited by John Cusatis. Also forthcoming is Kooser’s sixth children’s book Seven Skies All at Once, from Candlewick Press.  Kooser taught graduate poetry writing for fifteen years at The University of Nebraska and is the author of The Poetry Home Repair Manual.