2023 contests are now open!
Submission deadline: June 30
Meet the 2023 Contest Judges
2023 Chaffin/Kash Prize Judge
Shauna Morgan
Dr. Shauna M. Morgan is a poet-scholar and Associate Professor of creative writing and Africana literature at the University of Kentucky where she also serves as Director of Equity and Inclusion Initiatives in the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT). Before joining the University of Kentucky, Morgan was tenured on the faculty of English at Howard University where she taught from 2012-2019. Her poetry has appeared in A Gathering Together, Interviewing the Caribbean, A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, ProudFlesh: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness, among other periodicals and anthologies. Morgan’s chapbook, Fear of Dogs & Other Animals, was published by Central Square Press.
2023 Grand Prix Prize Judge
Kathleen Driskell
Kathleen Driskell is an award-winning poet and teacher. She is the author of five books including The Vine Temple, a chapbook title from Carnegie-Mellon University Press, Blue Etiquette: Poems and Next Door to the Dead. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in many nationally known literary journals including The New Yorker, River Teeth, Appalachian Review, Shenandoah, Southern Review, Rattle and are featured online on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and in American Life in Poetry. Her work has been anthologized in What Comes Down to Us: 20 Contemporary Kentucky Poets and The Kentucky Anthology. Past chair of the AWP Board (2019-22), Kathleen is professor of Creative Writing and Chair of the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University, home of the nationally distinguished low-residency MFA in Writing Program.
Kentucky State Poetry Society 