The Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize is awarded annually to an unpublished manuscript of original Anglophone poetry by an author of Asian heritage residing
Submit To 2023 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize
Deadline: May 15, 2023
Award: USD1,500+Publication in US and SG
Entry Fee: USD10
The Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize is awarded annually to an unpublished manuscript of original Anglophone poetry by an author of Asian heritage residing anywhere in the world.
The winner receives book publication and USD1,500.00.
Past winners were The Experiment of The Tropics by Lawrence Lacambra Ypil and Autobiography of Horse by Jenifer Sang Eun Park, selected by Wong May; Play for Time by Paula Mendoza, selected by Vijay Seshadri; and Object Permanence by Nica Bengzon, selected by Cyril Wong; Time Regime by Jhani Randhawa, selected by Dorothy Wang; and Waking Up to the Pattern Left by a Snail Overnight by Jim Pascual Agustin, selected by Yeow Kai Chai.
This year we’re honored to have Divya Victor to be our judge. Divya Victor is the author of CURB from Nightboat Books. CURB is the winner of the 2022 PEN America Open Book Award and the winner of the 2022 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.
It was also a finalist for the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award (Poetry). She is also the author of KITH (Fence Books/ Book*hug); Scheingleichheit: Drei Essays (Merve Verlag, trans. Lena Schmidt); NATURAL SUBJECTS (Trembling Pillow), UNSUB (Insert Blanc), THINGS TO DO WITH YOUR MOUTH (Les Figues). Her work has been collected in numerous venues, including BOMB, the New Museum’s The Animated Reader, Crux: Journal of Conceptual Writing, The Best American Experimental Writing, POETRY, The Yale Review, American Poetry Review, and boundary2. She is currently an Associate Professor of English and Writing at Michigan State University, where she is the Director of the Creative Writing Program.
Five finalists will be announced in August 2023, and they will be invited to read their work at a finalists’ reading in September 2023, at which the prizewinner will be announced. The winning manuscript will be published in Spring 2024 by Gaudy Boy, an imprint of the NYC-based literary nonprofit Singapore Unbound.
Established in 2017, Gaudy Boy publishes poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction of extraordinary merit by Asian voices. Our name is taken from the poem “Gaudy Turnout” by Singaporean poet Arthur Yap about his time abroad in 1970s Leeds, UK. From the Latin “gaudium,” meaning joy, Gaudy Boy seeks to delight our readers with the various powers of art.
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Guidelines For Submission
1. The contest is open to emerging and established poets.
2. No proof of Asian heritage is required. As writers ourselves, we go by honor between writers.
3. Submit a 70–120-page unpublished manuscript of original poetry in English. Please number the pages of your manuscript. Include a title page, table of contents, and an acknowledgments page for any previously published poems.
4. Email Jee Leong Koh at jkoh@singaporeunbound.org with a brief cover letter in the body of your email and the poetry manuscript attached in PDF or MSWord format.
5. Your name, mailing address, and email address should not appear anywhere in the manuscript. Instead, they should be given in your cover letter in the body of your email.
6. Submit your entry fee USD10.00 at PayPal to Jee Leong Koh (jkoh@singaporeunbound.org). We cannot consider your manuscript until we receive your entry fee. Your entry fee helps us defray some, but not all, of the editorial costs. We have set the entry fee low so that it will not be too much of a barrier for most people. If the fee is a barrier, please write to Jee at jkoh@singaporeunbound.org for a waiver. Entry fees are nonrefundable.
7. You may submit more than one manuscript, but a separate entry fee must accompany each manuscript.
8. You may submit the manuscript elsewhere simultaneously, but you must notify Gaudy Boy immediately if your manuscript is accepted by another publisher.
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