SUBMISSIONS FOR THIS YEAR’S GRAYBEAL-GOWEN PRIZE ARE NOW CLOSED.
Thank you for your participation; about a hundred poets entered this year.
We expect to announce the winner early in January.
This annual prize of $500 is awarded by Shenandoah and the Virginia Poetry Center for a single poem by a writer born in or with current established residence in Virginia. The winning poem will be published in SHENANDOAH in September 2012.
Entrants are invited to submit up to three previously unpublished poems. Send two copies of each poem (one with name and address and one without), SASE and brief biographical note, which should confirm the basis for eligibility to:
The Graybeal-Gowen Prize
Shenandoah
17 Courthouse Square
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA 24450-2116
Entries should be postmarked between October 1 and November 15, 2011.
No entry fee is required.
2011 Winner: Margaret Mackinnon of Falls Church, Virginia is winner of the annual $500 Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets, awarded annually by Shenandoah and the Virginia Poetry Center at Washington and Lee University, for her poem “Writing On the Window,” which will appear in a 2012 issue of the forthcoming on-line Shenandoah. The Graybeal-Gowen Prize is given by Mrs. Priscilla Gowen Graybeal and her husband James Graybeal, W&L ’49 and is dedicated to the memory of Mrs. Graybeal’s father, Howerton Gowen, W&L ’30, a lifelong lover of poetry.
Mackinnon’s work has appeared in various journals, including Poetry, New England Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Southern Humanities Review, Quarterly West, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Her new work appears in the South Carolina Review and is forthcoming in Image, RHINO, and Midwest Quarterly. Mackinnon completed the graduate program in creative writing at the University of Florida, and she has been awarded scholarships from Bread Loaf, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. For the summer of 2010, she was awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Currently, Mackinnon teaches literature and creative writing at a private high school in the Washington, DC area, and lives with her husband and daughter in Falls Church, Virginia.
Past Recipients:
2010: Elizabeth Murawski 2009: Jennifer Key
2008: Kevin Hart
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