2025 Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize

Please submit up to five previously unpublished poems with a total page count of no more than 10 pages. Poets at all stages of their careers are encouraged to submit. Multiple submissions are permitted with multiple fees. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable but please leave us a note to withdraw individual poems if they are accepted elsewhere. All submissions will be considered for publication. This year's final judge will be Cyrus Cassells. The prize is $1,000 and the winning submission will be published in the Summer 2025 issue of the journal.

Submissions for the Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize include a one-year digital subscription for four issues of MQR beginning with the Winter 2025 issue.

Goldstein Prize Guidelines

1. We accept submissions via Submittable and use its tools to ensure that all identifying information is hidden from our contest readers throughout the selection process.
2. We ask entrants not to include their names or contact information within the document they upload to Submittable, its title, or its file name.
3. Up to 20 submissions will be passed on, without identifying information within them, to the judge.
4. Close friends, relatives, students, and former students of the judge, are excluded from the contest. Likewise, the current Editorial Board and staff of MQR, as well as their immediate family members, are excluded from the contest. Graduates of the Helen Zell Writers Program in the last 3 years and current faculty and staff of that program are also excluded.  If any of the selected authors fall under these categories they will be disqualified, and a replacement will be chosen from among the finalists.
         We feel acquaintance and/or participation in a workshop (outside of semester-long academic settings) taught by the judge should not be a disqualifying factor, so long as none of the poems in a manuscript is recognizable to the judge.
         For the purposes of this contest, we'll call a “close friend” anyone with whom we have regular direct correspondence. And please remember that if a poem is recognizable to the judge, it will be disqualified.