2026 Long-list

Categories were Prose Poetry, Poetry, and Non-fiction/Essay/Memoir. Each piece was graded on quality/caliber, emotion, style/imagery, capture attention/surprise, and uniqueness/memorability. This long-list contains works that scored at least 84% by judges. Authors are not named, as the judges were working through the submissions. This list 2026 Long-list is Complete as of 09/29/2026.

Prose Poetry (updated 09/29/2026)

• 2:35 pm
• Angel in the War Zone
• The Autumn Hike
• Between the Bands of Jupiter
• The Cicadagirl Recounts Her Ribs
• Crimson Marinade
• The Day the Sky Fell
• Drowning
• Easier Said?
• Email I Save in My Drafts to Send Out
• Entertainment Orientation
• Every Shade of Forever
• Fausted
• Fogfather
• Go
• Hollow Knife
• In the Limbo of Maybe
• Inheritance of Weather
• The Jackal of My Calling
• The Living Walls
• The Monologue of Clair de Lune
• Oral Prosthetics Mounted After A …
• Silent Thunderstorms
• Sometimes on Shower Day
• Stonecoal Creek
• Throwing Away the Sourdough Starter
• Turns
• Vibramax for the Doldrums
• Voyage of the Bascart
• What Survives an Obituary
• The Window Tree
• Yearning for Peace

Poetry (updated 09/29/2026)

• Afghan Heart
• Alchemy
• The Angel Standing in the Sun
• The Architecture of Becoming
• Arctic Hare’s Lesson
• The Ballast of Dragons
• Beauty, Grace, Desperation
• Behind the Bushes at Spring Hill Camp
• Beyond the Glass
• Biography of a Goldfish
• Blind Man’s Bluff
• The Bread of Time
• A Calendar of Grief
• Calling Blue
• Carried Away
• The Cautious Songbird
• Chess and the Mountain
• Child Soldiers
• A Closet Artist
• Conversation with a Possum Near Key …
• Crooked Branches
• Crush(ed)
• Dead Whales Ain’t Fairy Tales
• Dear Dear
• A Dream We Have
• An Earlier Generation
• A Family Business
• Forever Night and Eternity
• Ghost Peppers
• Golden Dust
• The Heart
• Her Wallet
• I Am A God
• I Don’t Get Poetry Either
• I Have Bitten the Thumb of the Unexpected…
• I Want to Create
• If You Came Back
• In the Cave at Lost Boy Beach
• In Those Years, No One Slept
• Inventory of What the Lake Refuses
• Less of Home
• Long Time Friends
• Louder
• The Magma of Memory
• The Man Playing With Matches
• Mercury’s Confession
• Mine Anyway
• Monadnock
• Muse, or The Fish & Chips Joint’s OPEN
• Music Long Forgotten
• My Grandmother’s Story
• My Trouble With the Treble Clef
• Nightpark
• Not From, But Of
• The Ocean Looks Like Flesh
• Ode to the Carolina Wren
• Old Snow
• On Beauty
• Pantoum After Today’s Mass Shooting
• Patience
• Picking A Posy
• Pieces of Me
• Places I Will Not Return To
• Portrait of an Apricot
• A Prayer For the Living
• Rabbit’s Dream Serum
• Rain
• Rats
• Reading My Father’s Autopsy Report
• Reefs of Metal Junk
• Respite
• Revolution
• Ritual
• Sandy Anthill in the Crack of the Sidewalk
• The Shape of Grief
• Sliver of Time
• Some Kind of Free
• Sometimes
• The Stars Saw Nothing
• Striking Deals With the Weather Gods
• Superficial Bite
• Switching Stations at Christmas Time
• To My Brother Once More
• Unbridled Wind
• University Ave
• Untidy Pantoum
• Untitled (The Nest Is So Small…)
• The Weight of Heaven
• When You Left, You Took Her
• Where Am I
• Where Did the Love Go?
• Wild Spaces
• The Window
• Windshield Astronomy
• Wish
• With A Ribbon
• The Year is a Wheel
• The Year the Fence Started Forgetting
• Your Cruelty

Non-fiction (updated 09/23/2026)

• Beyond the System
• Billing and Boating at Bortir: A Bio…
• Dialects of Fruit
• The Egret and the Elephant
• Faker
• A Fool in the Woods
• Freckles
• Getting Squirrely at Illinois: The…
• The Great Bathroom Debacle
• Happy Birthday
• The Healer
• Honoring and Honored at the Rosebud
• Hooves on Asphalt: Carriage Horses in…
• How We Spend Our Days, Is of …
• The Last Sister
• Letters to My Grandson
• Man In a River
• Memory: Grief’s Grace
• Middleagery
• Monsieur Dupont
• My Surprise in Getting Married at 49
• On Condition
• One Red Light
• Opportunity’s Meadows
• Paradox of Music Labels: How Greed…
• Police Lineups and Minimizing Witness
• The Power of “Before”
• Prison Daughters
• A Reflection About Bathing
• Rosemary’s
• The Sino-German Alliance
• Sister Abby Yoyo
• The Space Before
• Stalking and Protecting the Ancients
• The Endurance Test
• This Journal Belongs to Theodore Young
• Three Hours
• Veganism Argumentative Research…
• Walmart Hot Dogs
• When Help Becomes Harm: The Quiet…
• Where Death Hold No Dominion
• You’re the Tenth Caller! Radio…
• Young and Old Have Same Train of…