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.

2026 Literary Prize Judges

2026 Fiction Contest Judge

Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is the author of Hummingbird Salamander; the Borne novels (Borne, The Strange Bird, and Dead Astronauts); and the Southern Reach series (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance), the first volume of which won the Nebula Award and Shirley Jackson Award and was adapted into a movie by Paramount. He has spoken at MIT, Columbia, Yale, and Vanderbilt, and gave the 2024 John Hersey Memorial Address at the Key West Literary Seminar. Environmental nonfiction by VanderMeer has appeared in Time, The Nation, Current Affairs, and Esquire, among others. VanderMeer founded the Sunshine State Biodiversity Group nonprofit in 2023. Absolution, a fourth Southern Reach novel, was published in 2024. (adapted from Jeff VanderMeer.com)

2026 Nonfiction Contest Judge

Sarah Viren

Sarah Viren is a writer, journalist, and translator. She’s the author of two books, Mine, winner of the River Teeth Book Prize, and To Name the Bigger Lie, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and an NPR best book of the year; she also translated the novella Córdoba Skies by Federico Falco. A contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, Viren teaches in the creative writing program at Arizona State University. Her work has been honored with a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Goldfarb Fellowship, a Dora Maar Residency, and a GLCA New Writers Award, among others. 

2026 Poetry Contest Judge

George Bilgere

George Bilgere came into national prominence in 2002 when then U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins chose his collection of poems, The Good Kiss, to win the University of Akron Poetry Prize. Collins then named Bilgere one of two Witter Bynner Fellows for 2002 and invited him to read at the Library of Congress. In 2006 Ed Field chose his book, Haywire, to win the prestigious May Swenson Poetry Award, and radio host Garrison Keillor began reading Bilgere’s poems on his daily National Public Radio broadcast, The Writer’s Almanac. The popularity of Bilgere’s poems on the show led to an appearance on Keillor’s long-running NPR radio show, A Prairie Home Companion.

Bilgere’s many honors include the 2022 Readers’ Choice Award from Rattle Magazine and the 2021 Editor’s Choice Award from New Ohio Review. He has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the Pushcart Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Foundation through the Library of Congress. He has won the May Swenson Poetry Award, the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize, the Devins Award, the University of Akron Poetry Prize, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and the 2023 Rattle Chapbook Prize.

His poems have appeared in Poetry, Kenyon Review, Best American Poetry, New Ohio Review, Field, Georgia Review, Southern Review, Sewanee Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, and elsewhere.

Bilgere is Distinguished Professor of English at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lives with his lovely wife and two fine little boys.