The LemonLight Prize
Thank you to everyone who submitted. The 2026 LemonLight Prize received 706 entries from poets across eight countries. Leila Chatti is reading now. Results will be announced in August 2026.
Our Open Reading Is Now Open
We read full manuscripts and poetry selections year-round. If you have a collection ready — or a body of work that needs a home — we want to read it. Every poet we have published came through our open reading.
Submit a ManuscriptReading your work
Leila Chatti
Final Judge · 2026Author of Deluge (Copper Canyon Press), Leila Chatti is one of the most acclaimed poets of her generation — a Tunisian-American writer whose work has reshaped contemporary poetry's reach into the lyric, the sacred, and the body.
Winner of the Levis Reading Prize · Luschei Prize for African Poetry · the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award · fellowships from the NEA, Stanford, and Tin House. MFA faculty, Pacific University.
What Winners Receive
Winner
$2,000 + Publication- Honorarium — $2,000
- Featured placement in the anthology
- 3 complimentary fine-press copies
- Long-form interview on The Ink Well
Honorable Mentions × 4
$250 each, + Publication- Honorarium — $250 per poet
- Featured in the anthology
- 2 complimentary copies
- Featured interview
Anthology Selections
40+ Poets Published- Selected by the editors
- Published in the anthology
- 1 complimentary copy
- Press notes & readings
Judging Timeline
Shortlist
The shortlist is announced in mid to late July. Shortlisted poets are notified directly and the list is published in The Ink Well.
Winner Announced
The winner and four honorable mentions are announced in August. All entrants are notified by email.
Anthology Mailed
The LemonLight Prize 2026 Anthology is mailed to all pre-order recipients in late August into September.
125 of 250 copies already claimed
What We Look For
Poems that earn their difficulty. Work that trusts the reader to follow it into the territory it actually wants to explore — grief, longing, faith, the body, the political, the everyday.
We do not have a preferred form, length, or aesthetic. Free verse, formal verse, hybrid, sequence, single lyric — all welcome. Strong craft and a clear voice matter more than any school or style.
The 2027 prize opens in spring. Join the Ink Well to be notified when submissions open.
The LemonLight Prize
The 2026 prize is closed. In the meantime, our open reading accepts full manuscripts and poetry selections year-round. Every poet we have published came through the open reading.
Why “LemonLight”?
The name comes from G. K. Allum's poem Middlesex, where the image catches the fragile hour between what was and what might be — half dawn, half memory.
It became a symbol for the press itself: the longing inside all art, the desire to preserve what's passing while still reaching for transformation. The prize honors poets who write from that threshold.