Booth invites submissions for the inaugural Susan Neville Prizes in Fiction and Poetry. Winners will be announced in April 2026.
Fiction Prize: $1,000 + publication
Poetry Prize: $1,000 + publication
Entry Fee: $20. Includes a two-issue subscription to Booth.
Guest Judges: Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis. Kaveh and Paige will collaborate on judging both Fiction and Poetry.
Submissions open from October 1, 2025 – December 31, 2025
Guidelines:
- Multiple submissions are welcome, but each submission carries its own contest submission fee.
- Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please withdraw any contest entries if your piece is accepted elsewhere.
- All entries must be previously unpublished.
- All previous winners of the Booth Prize and all current Butler students and faculty are ineligible. Former students of the Butler University MFA program are also ineligible.
- Fiction - No more than 7,500 words.
- Poetry - Up to three poems totaling no more than fifteen pages.
All submissions considered for publication. Send any questions to us at booth@butler.edu.
See our Submittable page starting October 1 to enter.
Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in the New Yorker, New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf 2021) and Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James 2017), in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry 2016). He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine (Penguin Classics 2022). Martyr! (Knopf, 2024), Kaveh’s first novel, was a New York Times Bestseller, the 2024 recipient of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize for Fiction, a 2024 Discover Prize Finalist, and a 2024 National Book Award Finalist.
In 2020 Kaveh was named Poetry Editor of The Nation. The recipient of honors including multiple Pushcart Prizes, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, and the Levis Reading Prize, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and teaches at the University of Iowa and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson. In 2014, Kaveh founded Divedapper, a home for dialogues with the most vital voices in American poetry. With Sarah Kay and Claire Schwartz, he wrote a weekly column for the Paris Review called “Poetry RX.”
Paige Lewis is the author of the poetry collection Space Struck and coeditor of Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance. Lewis's debut novel, Canon, will be published by Viking Press / Penguin in 2026. Lewis teaches at the University of Iowa.