The LemonLight Prize
A $3,000 poetry prize for work that earns its difficulty and trusts the reader
Selected by Leila Chatti. A $3,000 prize fund across five cash awards, plus publication in The LemonLight Anthology — a fine-press edition featuring 40 to 50 poets, produced by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit publisher.
Your work will be read by
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
What We're Looking 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.
Submit the poems you're proudest of. We're reading for work that could only have been written by you.
How to Enter
Prepare
Up to 5 unpublished poems, no page limit. Save as a single PDF or DOCX. Remove all identifying information from the file.
Submit
Upload through our submission portal and pay the $15 entry fee. Submissions are read blind.
Wait
Winners announced August 2026. Anthology published December 2026. All submitters notified by email.
Where your fee goes
Every dollar funds the prize, the anthology, and the press. Ink & Ribbon is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, fully volunteer-run, with no paid staff.
For comparison — Rattle's poetry prize is $25, Tupelo Press contests run $28, Cave Canem is $20. At $15, the LemonLight Prize is among the most accessible major poetry awards in the United States.
Submitting is also a vote for slow, careful publishing — books made to last, not produce.
Enter the Prize
$3,000 prize fund · Five cash awards · 40+ poets published in the anthology · Selected by Leila Chatti.
Submit Your WorkWhy "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.