Quarter After Eight's 2026 Summer Chapbook Contest Judged by Stuart Dischell

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 September 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 15, 2026 to September 15, 2026. A $15 entry fee is required upon submission.