STREETLIGHT’S 2026 POETRY CONTEST

April 13th to July 13th

1st Prize — $175
2nd — $100

Entry Fee: $10 FOR UP TO 3 POEMS

CONTEST GUIDELINES:

1. Up to three of your best, previously unpublished poems. Any subject.
2. Multiple submissions are fine.
3. This is a blind contest. Please remove all personal information from the story pages.
4. We encourage simultaneous submissions but if your piece is accepted elsewhere, inform us at poetry1@streetlightmag.com or poetry2@streetlightmag.com, right away.
5. Contest deadline is Monday, July 13th, 2026 midnight EST.
6. Competition winners will be announced July 27th, 2026. Only winning authors will be contacted. However, all entries will be considered for general publication in Streetlight. If your poetry is a good fit for a subsequent issue, we will get in touch to see if it is still available.
7. Winners will be chosen by Streetlight staff led by poetry editors Sharon Ackerman and Fred WIlbur. Winning submissions will run in a later 2026 Issue and in the 2026 Anthology.

This is a blind contest and your name will be hidden from our judges–do NOT include your name or address on the pages containing your work.

TERMS & CONDITIONS:

• By submitting your work, you grant Streetlight Magazine first North American print and electronic publication rights and guarantee that the submission is your own, original writing. All rights return to the author after publication.
• If you publish your work again at a later date, we request that you include a notice stating that it was first published at Streetlight Magazine.
• Our editors do not decline contest entries nor close them out. After the contest deadline, winners are announced, and non-winning entries are considered for general publication.
• All winning entries will be published online as well as in the 2026 Streetlight annual print anthology.

Sharon Perkins Ackerman holds an MEd from the University of Virginia. Her poems appear in the Atlanta Review, Southern Humanities Review, Kestrel, Appalachian Places, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Broad River Review, and many others. Her second poetry collection A Legacy of Birds is available on Amazon and her third collection, Sweeping the Porch (Pine Row Press), will be published in early 2026. She is poetry co-editor for Streetlight Magazine.

Fred Wilbur has written in varied genres including essays and blogs, historical research, newspaper columns, magazine articles, book reviews, and book introductions. He has also published three volumes of poetry, and three how-to woodcarving instruction books. His poetry collections are As Pus Floats the Splinter Out, Conjugation of Perhaps, and The Heft of Promise (Pine Row Press, 2025). The Nelson County Garden Club: The First Fifty Years, 1935-1985 was underwritten by the Nelson County Historical Society (2023).