The Booksie 2018 Poetry Contest

November 25, 2018 - The Winners are...

Drumroll please. It all comes down to this. We are please to announce the winners of the Booksie 2018 Poetry Contest. They are:

Grad prize:

• The First Time I Smelled Cologne by Faith Neece

Runner-ups

• Science Like Religion by Chanovic
• My Brother Is Black by A. Natalya Martin

Congratulations to the winners! We'll be featuring these poems across the site starting tomorrow. We'll also be in touch with the winners to discuss the awarding of the prizes. Thanks again to everyone who participated!

November 18, 2018 - The Finalists are Announced!

As promised, we are now ready to announce the finalists for the Booksie 2018 Poetry Contest. In order to choose them, we had to read through over 2,500 entries. Incredible! There were so many tremendous and moving poems but unfortunately, we could only pick six. 

So, without further adieu, and in no particular order, the finalists are:

• Science Like Religion by Chanovic
• My Brother Is Black by A. Natalya Martin
• Beautiful by Joy Shaw
• I Wonder (From Years Ago) by Nic Scott
• The First Time I Smelled Cologne by Faith Neece
• Letters to Virginia Woolf by umit sener ta (highest number of total reads)

Please join me in congratulating these finalists. And please congratulate all of the poets who put themselves out there! It takes courage to enter some of your most intimate thoughts into a contest.  

We'll be announcing the winners in one week.

November 6, 2018

We have almost read through all 2,500+ contest entries. We'll be announcing the finalists on November 18. Thanks for your patience!

October 1, 2018

We're going to get busy reading through and selecting the winners to the poetry contest. We'll be announcing the finalists in approximately one month on this page. 

Still want to enter a contest? Enter your humorous stories, poems, scripts, and more in the Booksie "Tickle My Funny Bone" Comedy Writing Contest.

Talk to you soon.

Booksie is looking to crown its 2018 Poet Laureate. Get your poems out and submit them to the contest.

The poetry can be of any type, length, or content, but it must be your own. The poetry can be serious or whimsical, fact or fiction, but it should strike a chord that makes us sit up and take notice. We're looking for poems will attract reader's attention as we will feature the winners on the homepage and across the site. You may submit as many entries as you like.

Judging

The judging will be done in rounds.

Finalist round: We will select six finalists. Five finalists will be chosen by the editorial team. One finalist will be chosen by readers as the work with the highest number of total reads will be selected. The names of the six finalists will be announced approximately four weeks after the contest has closed.

Winner round: One grand prize winner and two runner-ups will be chosen by the Booksie Editorial team from the six finalists approximately one week after the Finalist Round is announced.

Prizes:

Grand prize winner (Booksie Gold Poet Laureate). 

• $1,000 cash award
• Gold winner badge
• One free week of Boosts for their winning story (Boosting features the story in front of Booksie’s millions of monthly readers).

Two runner-ups (Booksie Silver Poet Laureates).

•  $150 cash
• Silver winner badge
• One week of Boosts for the winning entry.

View the Booksie 2017 Poet Laureates.

About Booksie

Booksie has been helping writers tell their stories since 2006. The site has over 200,000 writers online and is visited by millions of readers per year. Some of our writers have gone on to achieve best-selling writing success (such as Lydia Kelly with Screaming in the Silence). Many other members write for a hobby and find the site a great way to connect with others and showcase their talents. 

We've been running writing contests for over ten years on Booksie and its sister site TheNextBigWriter. Our goal is to inspire writers, recognize their talent, and reward those who produce unique, creative work. You can view a list of our recent Booksie winners here.    

Good luck!