Opens: December 12, 2023
Closes: February 13, 2024
Entry Fees: CWC Members: $15.00, Non-members: $20.00
Prizes: First Place — $150, Second Place — $75, Third Place — $25
Winners Announced: April 16, 2024
One poem of fewer than 50 lines; haiku excluded.
Junious “Jay” Ward is a poet and teaching artist from Charlotte, NC. He is a National Slam champion (2018), an Individual World Poetry Slam champion (2019), author of Sing Me A Lesser Wound (Bull City Press 2020) and Composition (Button Poetry 2023).
Jay currently serves as Charlotte’s inaugural Poet Laureate and is a 2023 Academy of merican Poets Laureate Fellow. Ward has attended Breadloaf Writers Conference, Callaloo, The Watering Hole, The Frost Place, and Tin House Winter Workshop. His work can be found in Columbia Journal, Four Way Review, DIAGRAM, Diode Poetry
Journal and elsewhere.
Poetry Contest Judge:
Junious “Jay” Ward