December Dates

by Olivia Loftis December 11, 2025

The Orchards: Winter 2025 is now available!

Please consider purchasing a print copy for yourself or to give the poetry lover in your life! Click on the cover to order our latest issue of The Orchards now.

The Orchards: Winter 2025 is also available on Amazon.

A free digital download is available at https://orchardspoetry.com/

Thank you to our poets featured in this issue, our dedicated team members, and our readers.

ICYMI: Our annual Winter Reading is now available on YouTube!

Click on the image to watch now

Announcing our Pushcart Prize nominations!

Check out Kelsay Books' 2025 Pushcart Prize nominees here.

Congratulations to our twelve selected poets!

Poetic Excellence

Awards

Congratulations to our American Book Fest finalists:

Poetry: Chapbook

Poetry: Narrative

Congratulations, Laura Rodley! Ribbons and Moths: Poems for Children is a finalist in the 2025 IAN Book of the Year Awards.

Congratulations, Anita Nahal! Drenched Thoughts won the 2024 Nissim Prize in Literature.

Congratulations, Stephanie Harper! The poem from We Have Seen the Corn, “The Corpus Callosum is Unremarkable,” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Renata Louwers of Months To Years journal.

Congratulations, Catherine Jagoe! Praying to the God of Small Things was awarded Outstanding Work of Poetry by the Wisconsin Library Association

Congratulations to our Missouri Writers' Guild 2025 Writers' Contest winners, Terry Allen and Nancy Jo Allen!

Features

Congratulations, Rae Spencer! Lisa Livesay of the Tennessee Library Association reviewed Watershed.

Congratulations, Kris Spencer! Ariel K. Moniz interviewed Kris about his debut novel, Every Storm Is A Message, for The Hyacinth Review.

Congratulations, John Maynard! Carol Tannenhauser covered Armando and Maisie in The West Side Rag.

Congratulations, Anne Archer! Over forty people made her launch party for PROMPTED standing room only.

Anne Archer hosted a lively launch event! ICYMI, click on the image to order your copy of PROMPTED.

Opportunities

2026 Rattle Chapbook Prize

Deadline: January 15th

The Rattle Chapbook Prize is back and as amazing as ever. Three winners receive $5,000 and 500 author copies—and one of those winners must be a poet who has never published a full-length book. As always, each chapbook will receive full distribution to all of our 10,000+ subscribers, too. It’s a contest to launch a career, and we get to publish a series of incredible books in the process.

Click for More Information

See the source image POETRY BOOK AWARD

FOR NORTH AMERICAN WRITERS AND PUBLISHERS

The Poetry Society of Virginia announces the 2026 PSV North American Poetry Book Award for poetry books in English published in 2025.

Submissions from authors and publishers are welcome.

Submission period: October 15, 2025-January 15, 2026.

Contact Sofia Starnes, smstarnes@cox.net for more information, or visit

The Poetry Society of Virginia website, www.poetrysocietyofvirginia.org, for details and entry form

Balcones Prize

Deadline: January 31, 2026

Prize Information Eligibility: Books of poetry of 42 pages or more may be submitted by author or publisher; send three copies; books must bear a publication date between January 1, 2025 and December 23, 2025.
Reading fee: $25

Mail 3 copies of the book to:

C. Prudence Arceneaux
ACC Creative Writing Dept. – Balcones Prize
6101 Highland Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78752

Click here to nominate a book.

Click Here for the latest news about the Balcones Fiction, Poetry, and Literary Nonfiction Prizes.

For additional info, please email balcones@austincc.edu