Variant Literature is excited to announce the inaugural Variant Lit Poetry Prize. We welcome submissions from both emerging and established poets, with a focus on work that is voice-driven and singular to the author. Winners will receive a cash prize and be published online in a special Variant Poetry Prize folio, with an introduction from guest judge Todd Dillard.
- 1st Place $750
- 2nd Place: $200
- 3rd Place: $50
About Todd Dillard
Todd Dillard’s work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Guernica, Fairy Tale Review, The Adroit Journal, Best New Poets, Waxwing, Poetry Daily and elsewhere. His debut collection Ways We Vanish (Okay Donkey Press) was a finalist for the 2021 Balcones Poetry Award. His chapbook Ragnarök at the Father-Daughter Dance is available from Variant Literature. A finalist for the 2025 AWP Donald Hall Poetry Prize, he lives outside Philadelphia, where he works as an editor and writer.
Timeline
- Submissions will be open May 15th to June 15th, 2026
- Winners will be announced by September 2026
Guidelines
- Submit 1–3 poems per entry (up to 10 pages total)
- Entry fee: $10
- Submissions are open internationally to poets writing in English
- Please do not include identifying information in your document
- Submit unpublished work only
- Simultaneous submissions are allowed; please notify us if accepted elsewhere
- Multiple submissions are allowed, but each entry requires a separate fee
- Work generated by AI will not be considered
- Please do not submit if you have a close relationship with the judge
- Please do not submit if you have had a chapbook or book published by Variant Literature
- Contributors to past issues of our online magazine are eligible to submit
- All submissions will be read by the Variant editorial team. A shortlist of finalists will be passed to Todd Dillard who will select the winners.
Submissions will open on May 15 via Submittable. We look forward to reading your work!
A Note from the Judge
I am interested in poems that peel back the quotidian and show me the marvel underneath. I am most interested in poems that hook me immediately, with startling images and a compelling voice, and that end in ways I could never see coming. I love humor, surrealism, absurdity, narrative, and interiority; I resist the didactic, the iterative, the poem that takes my attention for granted. What I love most are those poems that demand to be reread, poems whose salvo of language and craft insist I study them individually and then again in how they intermingle. Give me line breaks that crackle, make me laugh, stun me with grief.
