We are pleased to announce that Brian Teare will serve as the final judge for the 2026 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize. Each year one winner gets $1,500 and publication. We also publish three finalists, each of whom receives $200.
A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, Brian Teare is the author of seven critically acclaimed books of poetry, including Doomstead Days, winner of the Four Quartets Prize, and Poem Bitten by a Man, winner of the William Carlos Williams Award. A selected essays, Textual Preference, will be out from Nightboat in 2027. A professor of poetry at the University of Virginia, Teare lives in Charlottesville, where he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.
The winner and selected finalists of last year’s prize can be read in our Spring 2026 issue, arriving later in March.
Submissions to the Loraine Williams Poetry Prize must be sent either through Submittable from March 1 through May 15 or by regular mail postmarked within the same span of time. Submissions cost $25. All submitted poems will be considered for publication; any selected will be paid our regular poetry honorarium of $4 per line.
Entry requirements: Only one entry per submitter. An entry may include one, two, or three poems, but no more than a total of ten standard pages in 12-point or larger type. Work previously published in any form will not be considered. Simultaneous submissions are accepted; however, please let us know if it has been accepted elsewhere.
Translations are not allowed, as we do not have the capacity to effectively judge translations for this prize. We do accept translations for general submissions.
Postal submissions: Include (1) a cover letter that provides your phone number and email address and (2) a check for $25 for your entry fee. Checks should be made payable to The Georgia Review, and envelopes should be addressed to LWPP, The Georgia Review, Room 706A Main Library, the University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-9009. If you’d prefer to be notified by post, please also include a self-addressed, stamped envelope; otherwise, we will notify you by email.
All contest submissions are screened by a salaried editorial staff member. Selected finalists are then sent to the contest judge with all identifying information removed.
Please note that students, faculty, staff, and administrators currently affiliated with the University of Georgia are ineligible for the LWPP. Intimate friends, relatives, colleagues, and former or current semester-length students of a judge are also ineligible to enter. Previous winners of our contest should wait three years before entering again.
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The Georgia Review thanks the late Loraine Williams for her sponsorship of this prize. Ms. Williams was a longtime Atlanta-based patron of the arts.