2023 Contests

Share your work with us! 

The 2023 Five Ponds Festival has several exciting opportunities for registered participants to submit their work.

For poets, we have the Ann Ferguson Poetry Prize. For writers of prose we have the Lynn Marcotte Prose Prize. Festival-goers are invited to submit to either or both, but to kindly limit their submissions to two per person. Winners of each contest will earn a $50 prize, as well as a highlight during the participant reading. We ask that poems are no longer than 3 pages; prose should not exceed 1500 words. You may submit for each prize only once.  

Please email your typed submissions before 11:59 p.m. on April 22 to

[email protected]

with the subject line “Contest Submission [Poetry or Prose].” Save your work as a .doc, docx, or .pdf, and attach it to your email free of any identifying information. Include in the body of the email your name, phone number, email address, and the titles of the submission(s). We’d also be glad to receive a bio of not more than 100 words.

In your submission, you have the opportunity to also include a video of yourself reading your work, no longer than one minute. While not a requirement for submitting to either contest, we would be pleased to include your voice while assembling a video for our website of work that participants have shared with us.