Judged by Jerald Walker
Contest Rules
Genre: This prize is for works of nonfiction, including memoir, longform reportage, travel, etc.
Length: Submissions must be between 15,000 and 30,000 words.
Deadlines: Submissions may be made through Submittable from October 15 through January 31, 2025.
Other Rules: Only one submission per person. Entries must be previously unpublished. Paper submissions will not be accepted.
Entry Fee: $20 through Submittable.
Fee Waivers: A limited number of fee waivers are available; instructions may be found in Submittable.
Past and current affiliates of Harvard Review, as well as writers with a personal, student-teacher, or mentoring relationship with the contest judge are ineligible for this prize. Harvard Review complies with the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) contest code of ethics.
Our Judge
The judge for the 2025 prize is Jerald Walker, author of How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, a 2020 National Book Award Finalist and Winner of the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award, as well as two memoirs. His work has appeared in publications such as Harvard Review, Creative Nonfiction, the Iowa Review, and Mother Jones, and has been widely anthologized, including six times in the Best American Essays series. A recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, Walker is a Professor of Creative Writing at Emerson College. His latest book, Magically Black and Other Essays, was published in October 2024.
PREVIOUS CHAPBOOKS FROM HARVARD REVIEW
RAPTURE: A NOVELLA (2023)
by Reid Sherline
Described by Judge Lily King as “A marvel of compression” and by the Santa Monica Review as a “very small book” that has made “an outsized contribution to the literature of dark, weird Southern California,” Reid Sherline’s stunning debut publication was the winner of the 2023 Harvard Review Chapbook Prize.
RENGA FOR OBAMA (2017)
by 200+ poets
In early 2017, Harvard Review poetry editor Major Jackson curated the “Renga for Obama” project, a celebration of the Obama presidency featuring over two hundred American poets writing in pairs. The project, which originally appeared at Harvard Review Online, was published two stanzas a day for the first hundred days of the Trump presidency and was highlighted in the Washington Post. It has since been released as a limited edition chapbook with an introduction by Major Jackson and is available for purchase in our online store.
The full text can be read online here.
FUCKING RIGHT (1999)
by A. R. Ammons
An irreverent and humorous collection of poems by A.R. Ammons, one of our foremost environmental poets.
THE PAGANA: CHRISTMAS 1877 (1999)
by Tatiana Averoff
A winter’s tale by Greek author Tatiana Averoff that interweaves superstition and tradition to paint an evocative picture of a young girl’s Christmas.