Contest Submission Guidelines 

Prize: $1,008.15 + publication in the next edition of Quarter After Eight.

Judge: B.J. Hollars

Submission Period: June 01, 2026 to September 01, 2026.

Instructions: Submit your micros, your short-shorts, your prose poems, your non-fiction flashes, and anything in between (really, please surprise us)! We welcome submissions of 500 words or fewer in any genre as long as the work is written in prose (so a lineated poem wouldn't be considered). Submit up to three previously unpublished pieces and combine multiple pieces into one document, preferrable a doc, docx, or pdf. Please keep any identifying information out of the submission file. We love to read about your life, times, travels, wackiest story title, and which of your cats is secretly your favorite, but keep it to your brief cover letter written in third person. In your cover letter we at least need: your name, address, phone number, email address, mailing address and the title(s) of your submissions. Feel free to also add your Instagram handle.

The entry fee is $15 for up to three pieces. Online submissions close at 11:59 p.m. EST on September 1, 2026. Submissions received after this time will not be considered. All entries will also be considered for publication in Quarter After Eight. QAE staff chooses the top ten submissions, and guest judge B.J. Hollars will select the winning piece and 2 runner-ups. The winner and 2 runners-up will have their pieces published in the next edition of Quarter After Eight.   

 

B.J. Hollars is the author of several books, most recentlyDinosaur Dreams: A Father and Daughter In Search of America's Prehistoric Past (Oct. 2025),Wisconsin for Kennedy: The Primary That Launched a President and Changed The Course of History, and Year of Plenty: A Family's Season of Grief, as well as a collection of essays,This Is Only A Test. Additionally, he has also writtenThirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America and Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa. He and his film partner, Steve Dayton, have also completed a documentaryWhen Rubber Hit The Road.

Hollars is the recipient of an Upper Midwest Emmy® award, the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Nonfiction, the Anne B. and James B. McMillan Prize, the Council of Wisconsin Writers' Blei-Derleth Award, the Society of Midland Authors Award, and both the Midwest Book Awards Gold and Silver medals. His work has been featured on C-SPAN, Lit Hub, Washington Post, Star-Tribune, The Millions, and Wisconsin Life.

He is the founder and executive director of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild and the founder of the Midwest Artist Academy, as well as a professor of English at theUniversity of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and a columnist forThe Leader-Telegram.  

Quarter After Eight’s 2026 Summer Poetry Chapbook Contest, judged by Stuart Dischell

Fueled by Bauhaus, moderately hydrated, and begging for something to make us feel the same sense of wonder we felt when we first watched Labyrinth, Quarter After Eight’s annual summer poetry chapbook contest is back. This contest is open to poetry (and things that sort of feel like poetry, sad-posts that you’ve later re-purposed into poetry, poetic collages that are primarily written language but your friends keep describing as “poetic,” poetic esoterica and/or ephemera including the screenplay you wrote where you shipped two unfortunate 90s actors together but now they’re just recurring characters in your monologue poems and you aren’t embarrassed at all etc.). 

This year we’re excited to announce that Stuart Dischell is our guest judge. He is the author of Good Hope Road (Viking), a National Poetry Series Selection, Evenings & Avenues (Penguin), Dig Safe (Penguin), Backwards Days (Penguin), Children with Enemies (Chicago),The Lookout Man (Chicago), the collaborative work Andalusian Visions (Unicorn) and several other chapbooks, including Touch Monkey (Forklift), Standing on Z (Unicorn), and the newly published Love's Dominion (Unicorn). His poems have appeared in The Alaska Quarterly, The Atlantic, Agni, The New Republic, Slate, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and numerous national and international anthologies, including Best American Poetry, Good Poems, and the Pushcart Prize. A recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Ledig-Rowolht Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, he is a professor emeritus in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. 

So: what do we want this year? God, it’s so great of you to ask. We want so many things: some of which we should be able to give ourselves, some of which can never be given, and some of which we’re hoping you can give to us. 

WHAT DO WE WANT:

Poems that feel like getting drop-kicked by a Lisa Frank notebook collection through the flimsy door of the seediest motel in Laredo? We want that. Poems that tastefully invite just a little bit of brick-thru-statehouse-window roleplay? Tell us what to do, captain. Poems that make us a little worried about you but ultimately we think it’s good you’re getting all of this out? Yes, we take those. Bar-napkin love poems / sonnets about your favorite problematic movie / centos from 10 Things I Hate About You / we want to feel complete / we want to feel just a little buzzed on the margaritas / we want to read the poems of yours that sass us back and make us believe in a life after love.

HOW DO WE WANT IT:

Submissions should be 20-40 pages, should include a table of contents, and should have a title that seriously wows us. Submissions should come with an author bio that tastefully brags about your achievements (you have earned this and it’s time to be proud okay). Entry fee is $15 wet hot American dollars while they’re still the global reserve currency (and probably even after they aren’t because we cannot predict the future of finance and international diplomacy, we’re sorry). 

The contest is open to new, emerging, and established writers. We especially encourage submissions by writers from underrepresented groups. If you’re unable to cover the entry fee, reach out to quarteraftereight@ohio.edu. We have a limited number of submissions available free-of-charge.

WHEN DO WE WANT IT:

This contest opens on June 15, 2026 and closes on August 15, 2026 at 11:59 pm EST. Submit any time in that window and you’re golden. Submit outside of that window and we will be impressed how you managed to do that.

WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU WIN:

The winner will receive a $1,000 cash award and 25 printed copies of their chapbook beautifully designed by a local Athens, Ohio artist and laid out by a local Quarter After Eight editor (that's us!). Ten finalists will be chosen by the editorial team at Quarter After Eight, and guest judge Stuart Dischell will select a winner, as well as first and second runners up.   

Important Details 

All entries are read without identifying information by QAE editors. Please do not include any identifying information on the manuscript itself, including in the name of your file, in the "title" field in Submittable, or in the margins. Please include a title page (listing only the title of the work) and table of contents (if applicable). 

Manuscripts should be paginated and in a legible font that doesn’t burn our eyes to look at for prolonged periods of time. Manuscripts should be 20-40 pages in length, not including front and back matter (table of contents, title page, etc.). You are welcome to include a brief bio or something about yourself in your cover note on Submittable. If any of your included poems have been published in other journals, please include that information (title, journal, publication date) in the form of a list in the cover letter field.

Submissions will be open from June 01, 2026 to August 01, 2026. A $15 entry fee is required upon submission.