Accents Publishing

an independent press for brilliant voices

JAMES BAKER HALL BOOK AWARD IN POETRY

Accents Publishing is honored to partner with the James Baker Hall Foundation to launch the James Baker Hall Book Award in Poetry.

In 2024, the award will recognize an unpublished manuscript of poetry over 50 pages by a Kentucky author who has not yet published a full-length poetry collection. We define a Kentucky author as someone who lives in Kentucky, has lived in Kentucky, has strong ties to Kentucky or whose work features a prominent Kentucky theme.

Award: The author of the winning manuscript will receive a $3000 award and the manuscript will be published the following year by Accents Publishing, with the standard Accents Publishing contract.

Fees: None. There is no submission fee.

Eligibility: Poets 18 or older. Current students of the judge, as well as personal friends may not submit.

Manuscript preparation: The submitted manuscript must be anonymous. The author's name should not appear anywhere in the text.

Deadline: Manuscripts can be submitted between May 1st, 2024 and June 30th, 2024.

Submission: Only electronic submissions will be accepted. Please email the manuscript as a Word or PDF attachment to accents.publishing@gmail.com with a subject line of "[your name]: James Baker Hall Award submission". In the body of the email, please include the following information:

  • name

  • address

  • phone number

  • manuscript title

  • brief bio of up to 100 words

Judging: Acclaimed poet Greg Pape will be the final judge.

Announcement: Finalists and a winner will be announced on or before October 1st and will be expected to read at a public James Baker Hall Foundation celebratory event.

Greg Pape is the author of A Field of First Things (Accents Publishing), Four Swans, Animal Time, American Flamingo (Crab Orchard Open Competition Award), Sunflower Facing the Sun (Edwin Ford Piper Prize, now called the Iowa Prize), Storm Pattern, Black Branches, Border Crossings (Pitt Poetry Series), and other books. His work has received the Discovery/The Nation Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowships, the Richard Hugo Memorial Poetry Award, the Pushcart Prize, and other awards. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Colorado Review, Cutbank, Field, The Florida Review, Iowa Review, Literary Accents, The Louisville Review, Miramar, The New Yorker, Poetry, Kyoto Review, and others. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Montana and former Montana Poet Laureate. He currently serves on the faculty in Spalding University's Naslund-Mann School of Writing and lives in Frankfort, Kentucky.

The James Baker Hall Foundation

The mission of the James Baker Hall Foundation is to celebrate the legacy of our great artistic heritage by providing direct support to Kentucky's literary and visual creatives.