The 2026 Four Way Books Ellen Bryant Voigt Series in Poetry

Submission Dates: June 1 – June 30, 2026

Open to all poets. Book-length poetry collections.

Honorarium: $1000.00

Series Editor: Sally Ball

The Ellen Bryant Voigt Series in Poetry honors the legacy of a great American poet. From Four Way Books’ inception in 1993 until her death in 2025, Ellen Bryant Voigt was both inspiration and advisor to the press. In celebration of her work and her keen stewardship of the art of poetry, we seek collections that record the pulse of human experience in a complicated world, in which formal ingenuity underpins intellectual and emotional resonance.

The selected book will include a foreword by series editor Sally Ball.

Sally Ball serves as Associate Director of Four Way Books and has been with the press since 1996. She is the author of three books, most recently Hold Sway, whose poems the New York Times described as “beautiful in their compression… often breathtaking.” Her limited-edition artist’s book with Czech gravurist Jan Vičar is held in museums and special collections across the US and Europe (Arizona State University; University of Iowa; Bibliothèque Nationale de France; Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France; the Museum of Czech Literature in Prague, others). Her new work is appearing in The Nation, New Republic, Scientific American, and elsewhere. She is a professor of English at Arizona State University in Tempe and a faculty member in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Submissions accepted online only.

Please read the following instructions carefully:

 

General Guidelines (for all submissions)

BE SURE YOUR NAME DOES NOT APPEAR ON YOUR MANUSCRIPT. Our online form via Submission Manager will capture your contact information.

Submit a previously unpublished, full-length poetry manuscript in English.

Material in your manuscript may have been published previously in a chapbook, magazine, journal, or anthology form, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished. You may include an acknowledgments page of previous publications if you would like to do so.

Page lengths: A single poetry collection, approximately 48-80 pages of text, no more than one poem per page, please. More than one section of a poem can appear on a page, of course. These are page length suggestions. We allow more or fewer pages.

Please use a legible 12-point font. Please use 1-1/2 or double spacing for fiction; for poetry, your preference. You may include a table of contents, acknowledgment page, etc., if you would like to do so.

Do not include artwork.

Translations and previously self-published books are not eligible.

We consider using AI to generate your manuscript, in whole or in part, as disqualifying. Such manuscripts will be rejected outright, and no refund will be offered.  

You may submit multiple manuscripts, but each must be treated as an individual submission, submitted separately, and each requires an entry fee of $30.00 per submission. Each must have complete contact info, etc. If you have entered the Levis Prize, you may still submit to the Four Way Books Ellen Bryant Voigt Series in Poetry.

If you pay the entry fee but fail to submit your manuscript by the deadline, your fee will not be returned.

Please let us know immediately if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere.

In the event of a condition beyond our control (website down, internet down, power outage,  or other extreme circumstances), the deadline will be extended, and notice will be given along with the reason for the extension.

Due to the cost of running an independent press and the capacity of our small-but-mighty staff, it is a necessity that we charge submission fees for our reading periods. However, we do not want to exclude writers who cannot afford a reading fee, whose work is equally valuable and necessary in the world. We offer a limited number of fee waivers each reading period—as many as we are able, on a first-come, first-served basis. Please contact us (editors@fourwaybooks.com) if you need one, and we will provide it if we have not yet reached our cap. Thank you for sharing your writing with us.

 

Online submissions:

Our Reading Policy

Our preliminary readers are selected by the director of the press and are published writers, experienced editors, and/or writers who have received a graduate degree in creative writing or literature. We do not employ students to read manuscripts. Each manuscript is read by at least two readers. We rotate our readers seasonally so that those writers who wish to re-submit to Four Way Books can be assured that their manuscript(s) will receive fresh “reads.” Selections for publication are made by the publisher and director of Four Way Books.