The Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers (Open Only to High School Sophomores and Juniors)

The Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers, created in 2007 to recognize outstanding young poets, is an annual contest for poets who are sophomores and juniors in high school. The contest is named in honor of Patricia Grodd in recognition of her generous support of The Kenyon Review and its programs, as well as her passionate commitment to education and deep love for poetry.

The poems by the winner and runners-up will be published in The Kenyon Review, and the winner receives a full scholarship to the Kenyon Review Young Writers workshop. Submissions for the contest are open every year November 1 through November 30. 

• To submit your poem: fill out the fields below, attach your file, and click the "submit here" button. 
• Please submit only one poem to the contest. Only unpublished work will be considered for the prize. Please do not simultaneously submit your contest entry to another magazine or contest. 
• You must be a high school sophomore or junior to enter.
• Make sure your file is one of the following formats: PDF, Word document (.doc or .docx), Rich Text Format (.rtf), Microsoft Wordpad and Notepad, Apple TextEdit (.txt).
• We charge no entry fee. It is free to enter. 
• Submit between November 1 and November 30, 2024.

The final judge of this year’s contest is acclaimed poet Cate Marvin. Cate Marvin’s first book, World’s Tallest Disaster, was chosen by Robert Pinsky for the 2000 Kathryn A. Morton Prize and published by Sarabande Books in 2001. In 2002, she received the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize. She co-edited with poet Michael Dumanis the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande Books, 2006). Her second book of poems, Fragment of the Head of a Queen, for which she received a Whiting Award, was published by Sarabande in 2007. Her third book of poems, Oracle, published by W.W. Norton & Co., was named by The New York Times as one of “The Best Poetry Books of 2015.” Marvin teaches poetry writing in the Stonecoast M.F.A. Program at the University of Southern Maine and is Professor of English at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. A recent Guggenheim Fellow, she lives in Scarborough, Maine. Event Horizon, her fourth collection, appeared from Copper Canyon Press in 2022.

Winners will be announced in early February 2025 via email, on The Kenyon Review website, and in the February Kenyon Review newsletter. 

Thanks for your interest in The Kenyon Review.