Electronic submissions for the 2026 competition must be submitted no earlier than October 1, 2025 and no later than November 15, 2025. The submission window closes at midnight EST.

 To enter the competition, please return to this site during that period.
RULES AND SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

The Yale Series of Younger Poets is seeking submissions for its 2026 competition. The Yale Younger Poets Prize is the oldest annual literary award in the United States and the series champions the most promising new American poets. Winners of the Series will receive a $1000 advance and a publication contract from Yale University Press and one of the six writing fellowships offered at The James Merrill House in Stonington, CT. The fellowship provides a furnished living space and daily access to James Merrill’s apartment for a writer in search of a quiet setting to complete a project of literary or academic merit. The winning poetry manuscript will be selected by the series’ current judge, critically acclaimed poet Monica Youn.
All submissions will be judged anonymously.

There is an application fee of $25.00. Please follow these guidelines in preparing your manuscript:

1. The competition is open to emerging poets who have not  previously published a book of poetry and who reside in the United States.
2. Poets of any age may submit.
3. Manuscripts with interior images are not accepted.
4. Submissions must be original, book-length poetry manuscripts written in the English language. Translations are not accepted.
5. Poets may submit only one manuscript per year. Manuscripts submitted in previous years may be resubmitted.
6. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable during the submission and reading period. If you have submitted your manuscript to other publishers, we require that  you notify us immediately if you have an offer for publication. If your submission is selected as the winner of this prize, you must agree to  immediately withdraw the manuscript from consideration elsewhere upon  notification of your selection as winner.
7. Eligibility is further contingent on the poet’s agreeing to the terms of the publishing  agreement, all terms of which are non-negotiable.
8. There is an application fee of $25.00.
9. The manuscript must be a minimum of 48 numbered pages and a maximum of 64  numbered pages in length. All manuscripts must be paginated. Each new  poem must start on a new page.
10. The manuscript must begin with an  unnumbered frontmatter. Please see the separate instructions for  Electronic Submissions and Hard Copy Submissions below.
11. Begin paginating the manuscript after the frontmatter. If your book is divided  into parts or has an epigraph, Page 1 will be the first part title or  the epigraph. Otherwise, Page 1 will be the first poem.
12. In formatting the manuscript, please make legibility your first concern.  Poems must be typed/word-processed. Please select a standard typeface  (such as Bodoni, Garamond, or Times New Roman) in at least 10-point  type. Manuscripts may be single-spaced, double-spaced, or 1.5 spaced.
13. The Yale Series of Younger Poets reserves the right to reject any manuscript for any reason.
14. The Yale Series of Younger Poets reserves the right of the judge to not  choose a winner for any given year of the competition and reserves its  right to determine the ineligibility of a winner, in keeping with the  spirit and rules of the competition.
15. The winning submission will  be published in a book with a series design. We are happy to consider  the winner’s suggestions for an image to be featured on the book cover  in conjunction with the unified typographic approach of the series. If  we choose to adopt one of the suggested images, the poet will be asked  to secure permission to use it.

For more information about the Yale Series of Younger Poets, please visit:

youngerpoets.org

 or email ysyp@yale.edu

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

 For technical support, please email support@submittable.com.