2024 contests are now open!
Submission deadline: June 30
Meet the 2024 Contest Judges
2024 Chaffin/Kash Prize Judge
Melissa Helton
Melissa Helton is Literary Arts Director of Hindman Settlement School, a historical and cultural nonprofit in Knott County, Kentucky. She was previously associate professor of English at Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College. Her work has been published in Shenandoah, Women of Appalachia Project, Still: The Journal, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Norwegian Writers Climate Campaign, and more. Her chapbooks include Inertia: A Study and Hewn, and she is editor of the forthcoming anthology Troublesome Rising: A Thousand-Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky (University Press of Kentucky). Her work has been supported through the Kentucky Foundation for Women and has been awarded the George Scarbrough Poetry Prize, the Emma Bell Miles Nonfiction Prize, and nominated for Best of the Net. She is a dual citizen in the United Kingdom.
2024 Grand Prix Judge
Silas House
Silas House is the current Poet Laureate of Kentucky. He is the nationally bestselling author of seven novels, a book of creative nonfiction, and three plays. His latest novel, Lark Ascending, was awarded the 2023 Southern Book Prize in Fiction. His poetry, music journalism, and commentary have appeared widely in national publications. House was an executive producer and one of the subjects of the award-winning documentary film Hillbilly. He wrote the storyline and helped produce the Tyler Childers video “In Your Love,” nominated for a Grammy in 2023. House was chosen for the Duggins Prize, the largest award for an LGBT writer in the nation. He serves as the NEH Chair of Appalachian Studies at Berea College, on the fiction faculty at the Naslund-Mann School of Creative Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, and as a series editor for Fireside Industries at the University Press of Kentucky.
Kentucky State Poetry Society 