The Pushcart Prize is a prestigious literary award that celebrates outstanding writing published in small presses and literary magazines in print and online. It is not exclusive to poetry but also honors works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Each year, editors of small presses and literary magazines nominate works they published, showcasing voices that may not receive attention from larger publishers.
For poetry specifically, the award recognizes exceptional poems that reflect originality, craft, and artistic depth. Each publication can nominate up to six poems for consideration. Poems and poets who are nominated are a select group, and winning or being included in the annual Pushcart Prize Anthology often brings significant recognition and helps elevate a poet's career.
The Pushcart Prize was founded in 1976 by Bill Henderson and being nominated, as well as being published in the annual, is considered one of the most coveted honors in the realm of small press literature.
Our nominations were selected by the editor and four readers from all poems published in 2024.
Poets Online proudly announces our 2024 nominated poems for the Pushcart Prize.
Poems and prose selected by the Pushcart Press editors will be published in The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses XLIX in Spring 2025.
The idea for the Pushcart Prize anthology was conceived in the early 1970s by founding editor Bill Henderson, a senior editor at Doubleday. “I was tired of the publishing industry turning writers into dollar signs,” Henderson says, citing the tendency for big houses to favor marketability over substance. After leaving Doubleday, he self-published The Publish-It-Yourself Handbook: Literary Tradition and How-To, a guide that advised writers on how to start their own presses.
To further champion the work of small presses and literary journals, Henderson began to conceive of a “Best of the Small Presses” prize and anthology to highlight poetry and prose being put out by indie publishers each year.
Henderson used money from his book sales to get the anthology off the ground, and in 1976, he self-published the first annual Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses.
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