Contests and prizes
Poetry contests are paid or unpaid writing competitions where poets submit poems through a deadline and a judge or panel selects the winners, with the winners printed in a magazine, a journal or an anthology. River and Sound is an independent literary journal that runs such contests around each issue, pairing open submission windows with themed calls so that the poems, short stories and hybrid pieces published in the book you hold are the ones that survived the judging. The page below maps that contest history, its prizes and the way the open submissions and special calls feed into the works in each issue, and it answers the questions that reach this journal from readers searching for free entry contests in 2026 and later.
Contest legitimacy is the first question a reader asks, and the answer for a journal like this one is structural: the journal names the judges, publishes the winning poems and prints their names, so the work of the contest is visible in the issue itself. That visibility is what separates a legitimate prize from a fee-driven mill, and it is why Poetry contests with money behind them at an independent journal carry a weight that a stand-alone contest site rarely matches. The journal's contests are free to enter, so the entry barrier is time, not cash, and the reward is publication with the cash prize attached rather than the reverse. For context on the wider field, a reader can measure this journal against the institutions that set the standard: Poetry magazine, founded by Harriet Monroe in October 1912, still publishes 10 issues a year, the Forward Prizes for Poetry have been presented since 1992, and the O. Henry Award has judged short stories since 1919. A small independent journal does not compete with those institutions for prestige, but it borrows their habits: named judges, stated prizes, and winners printed where anyone can read them.
How River and Sound runs its contests
How River and Sound runs its contests is best read as a cycle that repeats every year. Each issue opens with a themed call that asks for poems around one idea, then an open window that takes work in any mode, and then a judging round that closes a few weeks before the issue ships. The 2026 season, for example, runs 3 calls: a January call for poems about water, a May open window for any form, and a September call for hybrid pieces that sit between prose and verse. Entries arrive through a single submissions portal, each submission carrying the author name, an email address and the text of the poem, and the journal caps entries at 5 poems per author per call so that a single name does not fill the stack.
- Themed call for one idea, 14 day entry window
- Open window for any form, 30 day entry window
- Hybrid call for prose-verse crossovers, 21 day entry window
- Judging round of 21 days before the issue ships
Horror short story contests sit alongside the poetry calls when an issue is built around dark material, and the journal then opens the fiction side of the same window so that a short story and a poem can enter the same issue. That pairing is one of the reasons the journal's contest record reads like a small archive: the poems and the short stories are judged against the same season of work, and the issue collects both sides of the argument. The horror side is the younger cousin of the O. Henry tradition, and the journal treats it that way, judging the short story on the same standard of text that the poetry calls apply to the poem.
The prizes and what they pay
The prizes and what they pay are stated in the call, and the figures stay the same across a season so that an entering poet knows the value before sending a poem. The 2026 season carries a 100 dollar first prize in each poetry call, a 50 dollar second prize, and a 25 dollar third, with the winning poems printed in the issue and a print run of 3 copies sent to each winner. The open window carries the same 3 prize tiers, and the hybrid call pays a single 75 dollar prize to its one winner. No entry fee applies to any of these calls, and the journal does not sell subscriptions to enter, so the only cost to a poet is the time it takes to choose a poem and send it.
| Call | First prize | Second prize | Third prize | Entry fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January themed call | 100 dollars | 50 dollars | 25 dollars | Free |
| May open window | 100 dollars | 50 dollars | 25 dollars | Free |
| September hybrid call | 75 dollars | Not offered | Not offered | Free |
Publication is the second currency, and for many of the entering poets it is the larger one. A poem printed in the issue reaches the journal's readers and its small but steady subscriber list, and it stays in the back issues, so a winner from the 2025 season is still reachable in the archive. That permanence is a part of the prize that a cash-only contest cannot offer, and it is the reason the journal states publication and money in the same sentence rather than as separate lines. The same habit shows up in the older institutions: the Forward ceremony in London prints the winners as surely as it pays them, and the Nibbies, awarded by The Bookseller since 1990, pair a trophy with the public record of the book that won. A journal with no trophy budget keeps the half that matters to a reader, the printed record.
Free entry contests and the 2026 season
Free entry contests and the 2026 season meet in the simple fact that every call the journal runs this year costs nothing to enter. Readers searching for poetry contests with free entry find the 3 calls above, each open to adults and to students, and each closing a few weeks before the issue ships. The open window is the one to enter if the goal is a poem in any form, because it asks for no theme and no limit on length beyond a fair reading time, and the themed calls are the one to enter if the goal is a poem that matches a season, because a judge reading 500 entries in a water-themed call is looking for the poem that says water in a way the others do not. The 2026 season also carries 1 special call for a single poem, the journal's annual one-poem prize, which pays 150 dollars to its winner and prints the poem on the inside front cover of the issue.
- January water-themed call, free entry, closes in January
- May open window, free entry, closes in May
- September hybrid call, free entry, closes in September
- One-poem annual prize, free entry, pays 150 dollars
Free entry is not the only marker of a fair contest, but it is the first one to check, and the journal's 2026 calls clear it on every line. A poet weighing whether a contest is worth the time can check the call against 3 facts: the judges are named, the prize is stated in dollars, and the entry fee is 0. The 2026 calls meet all 3, which is the standard the journal asks of itself before it opens a window. The free-entry line is the one that separates this contest record from the subscription-mill model that has grown up around the search term, and it is the reason the journal repeats it in every call instead of burying it in a terms page.
Open submissions and the special calls
Open submissions and the special calls are two doors into the same issue, and the difference between them is the theme. The open window takes any poem from any poet who sends one, and the special call takes poems built around one idea, so a poet who has a strong poem but no theme fits the open window, and a poet who has been waiting for a theme that matches a poem they already wrote fits the special call. The judging standard is the same in both: the poem has to stand on its own text, and the journal does not weave an author's previous publications against a new entry. That standard is what lets a first-time poet and a published poet land in the same issue, and it is the reason the issue's table of contents reads like a mix of voices rather than a list of names.
Stories in River and Sound arrive through the fiction side of the same cycle. The journal opens a short story window in the same months as the poetry calls, and a short story that wins is printed in the issue with its own prize line, so the issue carries a poetry section and a fiction section drawn from the same season of entries. The connection between the two is the issue itself: the poems and the short stories are read together, and a reader who opens the issue for one is reading the other on the next page. The fiction side borrows its measuring stick from the older awards, the O. Henry Award that has judged American short stories since 1919, and from the genre line that the World Fantasy Awards have marked each year since 1975: a story is judged on its own text, in the company of the strongest stories of the same season.
Contests for students, teens and younger writers
Contests for students, teens and younger writers are part of the journal's open windows, and the journal states age openly in the call so that a schooler, a teen or an adult knows which window is theirs. The open window is open to all ages, and the journal runs 2 student-focused notes each year: one in the spring that points middle school and high school students at a shorter word count so a 9 year old and a 16 year old can both enter, and one in the autumn that names a separate prize for under-18 poets, a 100 dollar prize that is judged by the same panel as the adult prizes. Teens looking for a contest that pays and prints can enter the under-18 prize through the autumn call, and adults looking for the same two things can enter the open window or the themed calls, and the 3 prize tiers in the table above apply to both. The journal does not run a separate kids-only contest, but the under-18 prize and the shorter word count option are the 2 hooks that bring younger writers into the same cycle as the adults.
- Open window, all ages, no word count beyond fair reading time
- Spring note, shorter word count for middle and high school students
- Autumn under-18 prize, 100 dollars, judged by the same panel
The reason the journal folds students into the adult cycle rather than running a separate track is the archive: a poem entered by a 14 year old in the 2026 season sits in the same back issue as the poem entered by a 40 year old, and the issue does not separate them by age. That choice is a statement about what the journal thinks a reader is, and it is the same statement that puts a first-time poet and a published poet in the same table of contents. It also mirrors the way the National Book Awards have worked since the new version began in 1950: one field, one standard, and the age of the writer is not a line in the rules.
Finding a contest that fits the season
Finding a contest that fits the season is a matter of matching the poem to the call, and the journal's 3 annual calls make that matching a short list rather than a long one. A poet with a poem about water enters the January call, a poet with a poem in no particular theme enters the May open window, and a poet with a prose-verse hybrid enters the September call, and the one-poem annual prize is open to a single strong poem from any of the 3 windows. The 3 calls and 1 annual prize are the whole 2026 contest record for the journal, and each one is free to enter, named in its judges, and printed in the issue that follows. A reader who wants the full picture of writing contests tied to River and Sound can start with the table of prize tiers, check the call that matches the poem in hand, and enter through the submissions portal before the deadline for that call, and the issue that ships a few weeks later is where the answer to the contest is printed. The institutions named on this page, the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, the Forward in London, the O. Henry panel and the Nibbies, all work the same way at the level that matters to a reader: the work is judged, the winner is named, and the prize is stated before the deadline closes.