With an award of $1,000 for the winning poem, the Edwin Markham Prize honors outstanding works of poetry. Our taste is eclectic and celebrates the wonderful diversity of forms, styles, and levels of diction available to the contemporary poet. Writers may submit up to five (5) poems per submission. 

About our Guest Judge: Anthony Cody

Anthony Cody is the author of Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn, 2020), winner of the 2018 Omnidawn Open Book Contest selected by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and The Rendering (Omnidawn, 2023). He is a 2022 Whiting winner, 2021 American Book Award winner, a 2020 Poets & Writers debut poet and a 2020 Southwest Book Award winner. Borderland Apocrypha was named a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry, the PEN America / Jean Stein Book Award, the California Book Award, the LA Times Book Award in Poetry, as well as longlisted for The Believer Magazine 2020 Editor’s Award in Poetry. A CantoMundo fellow from Fresno, California, Anthony has lineage in the Bracero Program and the Dust Bowl. His work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets: Poem-A-Day, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, The Colorado Review, The Boiler, ctrl+v journal, among others. 

 Reed Magazine policies and guidelines:

• Submission cap: Please limit your submission to our free categories to two (2) per person during each open reading period. There is no limit to the paid categories.
• Use of AI: Reed Magazine honors the complexity and diversity of human creativity. Submissions that appear to be the product of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools will be declined. However, if you have a piece that interrogates the use of AI, we welcome it. Reach out if you have questions on this.
• Formal-play and genre-blending work: We love and encourage work that is both formally and generically playful. If this describes your work and you’re unsure which category to submit it to, submit to the one it more closely aligns to. You can add an explanatory note in your cover letter if the context would help us in our consideration.
• Editorial process: Reed Magazine copy editors will review submissions accepted for publication to ensure consistency with our style conventions.
• We do not accept work that has been previously published (physically printed and distributed or digitally available to the public). We do accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us if your work is selected for publication elsewhere.

 Please be sure to: 

• provide a cover letter that includes your name, mailing address, phone number, and email address (but exclude this information from the works themselves)
• include a brief bio, up to 50 words
• save submissions as a Microsoft Word (.docx or .doc) or Portable Document Format (.pdf) document
• single- or double-space text, and use an easily readable 12-point typeface (such as Times New Roman)
• number pages
• submit up to five (5) poems in a single document
• check that your Submittable profile is up-to-date 

           The contest reading fee is $20 (accompanied by a digital journal) or $25 (accompanied by a print journal). Submitters with US addresses on file will receive print copies of the journal, whereas those with international addresses may only receive digital copies. Multiple submissions are accepted as separate entries. Contest submissions not selected for final judging may still be considered for publication in the journal and/or online. 

Edwin Markham Prize for Poetry submitters can expect to hear back from Reed Magazine by the end of December 2026.