Guidelines:
 

• Please submit an original manuscript of 48-120 pages (primarily) in English.
• Cross-genre and hybrid work, verse forms, text-and-image experiments, connected or related pieces, and “beyond category” projects are all within the ambit of the contest. We also welcome more traditional approaches to creative nonfiction.
• Multiple submissions are acceptable as long as they are submitted separately with separate entry fees.
• Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please be sure to withdraw your submission via Submittable if your work is accepted elsewhere.
• Individual essays/pieces may have been previously published in magazines, journals, anthologies, or chapbooks, but the work as a whole must be unpublished. If applicable, please include with your manuscript an acknowledgments page for prior publications.
• The competition is open to writers who have previously published book-length collections, as well as to unpublished writers.
• Be sure that your document is complete and formatted correctly before uploading.
• Please update any changes in contact information via your profile on Submittable.
• No revisions to submitted manuscripts will be considered. The author of the winning manuscript will have the opportunity to work with the editors in making revisions prior to publication.
• There is a non-refundable submission fee of $27 payable through Submittable.
• Your manuscript should include a single cover page with the title of the manuscript only, so that your manuscript document remains anonymous. No identifying material should appear anywhere in the body of the manuscript. (Your identifying information will be available to us via Submittable if needed.)
• To avoid conflicts of interest, the Seneca Review editors will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts if they can recognize the work of a close friend, relative, or current or former student. Such manuscripts will be re-assigned to a neutral editor.
• Close friends, relatives, and current and former students of the contest judge, Melissa Febos, are not eligible to submit.
• If you are unsure whether or not your manuscript fits the parameters of this book prize, we encourage you to send it! As we have said on Essay Daily, we consider "the lyric essay book prize" as a kind of anti-category category. We err in the direction of receptivity and openness. Thank you!
   

Process and Ethics:
Seneca Review and HWS Colleges Press endorse and abide by the Ethical Guidelines of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP): “CLMP’s community of independent literary publishers believes that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. We believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, we agree to 1) conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors; 2) to provide clear and specific contest guidelines — defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and 3) to make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public. This Code recognizes that different contest models produce different results, but that each model can be run ethically. We have adopted this Code to reinforce our integrity and dedication as a publishing community and to ensure that our contests contribute to a vibrant literary heritage.”

Throughout our reading and selection process, we will ensure the submitter’s anonymity during review. After the submission deadline, manuscripts will be divided among Seneca Review editors, who will select approximately 15 semi-finalist manuscripts. The Seneca Review editors will then work in a classroom setting with an undergraduate Acquisitions Editorial Board to narrow down the manuscripts to five finalists. The judge, Melissa Febos, will then select, by mid-December, the winning manuscript. We will announce the winner before the end of December.

Matthew Morris's The Tilling

The Tilling was selected by Wendy S. Walters as the winner of the 2024 Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize.

Guidelines

Review-Essays 

We welcome review-essays centering close readings of one or more collections of poetry, lyric and experimental essays, and hybrid works. 

As we prefer more in-depth reviews that demonstrate their points through closely-read examples from the text, the length of your review should fall approximately between 800 and 2,500 words (that’s really very “ish”). The fundamental point for us is to give readers as clear a picture of what it’s like to read this book without actually reprinting the whole book. Don’t just make disconnected interpretive claims that sound great; show us how that “tick” tocks!

 We value a variety of approaches to the review, including some that might take a more circuitous route of engagement (as befits the work or the reviewer’s instinct) or one that is directed in a clearly linear manner by an overarching idea or “thesis” (or whatever else you might dream up—try us and see). We do not dismiss mixed reviews but believe them a necessary part of an honest and healthy critical discourse, and while we truly love to celebrate books that you wholly love and find flawlesslessly stunning, we disdain language that is both vague and inflated, amounting to little more than a lengthy blurb. We want critical discourse that “thinks feelingly” to produce attentive explorations of rich and engaging texts. 

Just what constitutes “rich and engaging” texts? You convince us! But at best, a work constructs an experience of language using a great deal of its “biodiversity” (if we think of language as a living landscape), which, of course, includes its many realms of socio-cultural and historical diversity. 

For the best guidance, see prior reviews (and the books they review), such as Lisa Pasold on Carolyn Hembree’s For Today (in our Fall 2023 issue) and Jane Yager on Donna Stonecipher’s The Ruins of Nostalgia.

Rediscoveries

 We are not only interested in publishing review-essays on recent books but are eager to highlight books that passed largely under the radar and to rediscover others from decades past. With that in mind, please feel free to submit engagements with any non-canonical book (whether the author is or not) from either the 20th or 21st centuries. 

Flashes

After all that about lengthy, attentive reviews—we really do want substantive discourse!—we also think an impression-offering flash of light over the pages of a carefully-read book can inspire interest in deserving work, and we’re open to considering short “flashes” embodying the overall impression or zoomed-in “detail of” perspective—as long as it comes from an equally attentive eye on the book. We’re thinking 200 to 600 words of original text (that is, not including quoted material). One of the most recent reviews that comes closest to exemplifying this approach (prior to our actual call for it) is rob mclennan’s review of Susanne Dyckman and Elizabeth Robinson’s Rendered Paradise. But really, we're thinking of reviews that are even more compressed—one to three well-conceived (lyrical?) sentences....

For Writers and Publishers 

If you would like to have your book considered for review, please send two review copies to:

Geoffrey Babbitt

Editor-in-Chief, Seneca Review

209 Smith Hall

300 Pulteney Street

Geneva, NY 14456

We can't wait to read your reviews! Thank you.

Michael Tod Edgerton

Seneca Review

Assistant Editor of Reviews and Poetry