Tomaž Šalamun Prize 

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The winner receives $1,000, publication of their chapbook by Factory Hollow Press, and a free one-month residency in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

About

Founded in 2015, the Tomaž Šalamun Prize honors the memory of the great Slovenian poet who inspired several generations of poets from around the world. For the first two years, the winner’s work was published in Verse. When Verse ceased publication in 2017, Factory Hollow Press started publishing the winning chapbook. And with the opening of the Tomaž Šalamun Centre for Poetry in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2017, the prize started offering a free one-month residency in Ljubljana in order to promote cultural exchange and provide a poet with a vibrant space to live and work. In 2019, the prize administrators added an editors’ choice selection so that two chapbooks from the submission pool would be published. Recent winners’ chapbooks have been translated into Slovenian and published in Slovenia.

Previous Winners

Winner Judge

2022 Suphil Lee Park Ilya Kaminsky
2021 Rachel Abramowitz Sawako Nakayasu
2020 Jake Bauer Bianca Stone
2019 Jennifer Liberts Emily Pettit
2018 Sophia Terazawa Anaïs Duplan
2017 Nathan Hoks Matthew Zapruder
2016 Vincent Zompa Dara Wier
2015 Felicia Zamora Brian Henry


Editors’ Choice Selections

2022 Naomi Mulvihill
2021 Alisha Dietzman
2020 Zoe White
2019 Dalton Day

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Guidelines


The annual deadline is March 15.

The Tomaž Šalamun Prize is open to poets at any stage of their career. Previous publication is neither a requirement nor a restriction.

Translations into English are acceptable if the author is still living and has given written permission. Prose poetry and hybrid forms are also acceptable.

Individual pieces in the chapbook may have been published in print and/or online journals, but the chapbook itself must be previously unpublished.

Chapbooks should be 20-28 pages (total length including title page, optional table of contents, optional acknowledgments/notes). Manuscripts will be read blind, so the author’s name should not appear anywhere in the manuscript. Acknowledgments are permitted, but not required. Submissions must be a .doc, .docx, or .pdf file.

For full guidelines, visit verse.submittable.com.

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The Residency


The apartment is located on Cankarjeva Cesta (Cankar’s Street) in downtown Ljubljana, near the Slovenian Opera House and the Museum of Modern Art. The apartment has a kitchen and its own bathroom. The winner may bring a partner or child with them. The apartment and residency are managed by the Tomaž Šalamun Centre for Poetry and JSKD in Ljubljana. 



The winner will have access to the Tomaž Šalamun library, which is located in the same building as the apartment. The library includes all the books from Tomaž’s personal collection.

The winner will be invited (but not required) to give a reading at the Tomaž Šalamun Centre for Poetry. The winner also will have their chapbook published in Slovenian translation.

Tomaž Šalamun

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Tomaž Šalamun published more than 60 books of poetry in Slovenia. His poetry has been translated into more than 25 languages around the world. His many books in English include Selected Poems (Ecco, 1988), The Four Questions of Melancholy: New and Selected Poems (White Pine, 1996), Feast (Harcourt, 2000), Poker (Ugly Ducking, 2004), Woods and Chalices (Harcourt, 2008), On the Tracks of Wild Game (Ugly Ducking, 2012), and Druids (Black Ocean, 2019). In the late 1990s, he worked in New York as the Cultural Attaché to the Slovenian Embassy. He also taught at many universities in the U.S. as a visiting professor.