Submit Your Manuscript

The final judge’s decision will be made known in April or May 2021, and the news will be posted at waywiser-press.com at that time.

1. Entrants should be at least 18 years of age.
2. Entrants should not have published more than one full-length previous collection of poems, though they may have published an unlimited number of books belonging to other genres.
3. Individual poems from the collection may have been published in: (a) magazines, journals, or anthologies; (b) chapbooks and pamphlets of 36 pages or less (the count to include poems and exclude back and front matter); (c) self-published items of 32 pages or less (the count to include poems and exclude back and front matter).
4. Nobody who has a book published by or forthcoming from The Waywiser Press may enter.
5. Manuscripts should be in English, and the original work of the entrant, though as much as one sixth of the manuscript may consist of public domain translations (i.e. translations from poems whose authors have been dead for 70+ years).
6. Entrants who reach the semi-finals of the contest should be able to send The Waywiser Press a hard copy of their manuscript, and this copy, stripped of anything that would identify the author, should otherwise correspond in every particular to the original.
7. Entrants must be willing to read from their collections at the Hammer Museum in spring 2022, if they are chosen as the winner.

1. Manuscripts should be a minimum of 48 and a maximum of 88 pages (the count to include poems and exclude back and front matter).
2. Manuscripts should be typed or word-processed – preferably in 11-point type – on standard document size.
3. Pages should be numbered consecutively, and a table of contents, as well as a list of acknowledgements (where appropriate), should be included.
4. The author’s name and contact details (i.e. physical address, phone number and email address) should appear on the front page of the manuscript and nowhere else.
5. No illustrative material should be sent.
6. A list of previous poetry book, chapbook or pamphlet publications should be included, and with it a list of the magazines in which you have had poems published.
7. Entrants may submit a manuscript elsewhere simultaneously but should immediately notify The Waywiser Press of its withdrawal from the competition if it is accepted for publication by another organization.
8. Once submitted, a manuscript may not be altered, though the winner of the prize will be given the opportunity to revise before publication.
9. The Waywiser Press cannot accept responsibility for missing submissions.
10. If the judge is not satisfied that a high-enough standard has been met, The Waywiser Press reserves the right not to award the prize in a particular year.

US $29, but you can pay this using most standard credit or debit cards (regardless of the issuing country) or using a PayPal account.

Manuscripts should be submitted by midnight on December 1st 2020.

1. Only single file submissions can be accepted, so if your manuscript is stored in multiple files, they will need to be amalgamated before you upload.
2. Your submission should be in PDF format. If at the moment it is saved as a Word file, you can easily convert it by opening the file in Word, clicking on the FILE menu, clicking SAVE AS from the drop-down options, and then clicking on the PDF option (FILE ⮕ SAVE AS ⮕ PDF). Please do not lock the file you submit (i.e. make it impossible for us to print or cut and paste from it).
3. Please ensure that your file name corresponds to the title of your manuscript (with underscores replacing spaces). So, for example, if your manuscript were titled “The Waste Land”, it should be uploaded as The_Waste_Land.
4. You will need to have your credit or debit card or PayPal account details ready, since you will only be allowed to submit after the entry fee has been paid.
5. When you are ready to proceed with payment and upload of your manuscript, please click on the button below.(a) Then complete the submission form and click the ‘Proceed to PayPal button;
   (b) You will be taken to PayPal’s payment portal, and asked to pay the $29 submission fee (using your credit or debit card or PayPal account details;
   (c) Once your payment has been made, you MUST then click on the ‘Return to Merchant’ button, which will bring you back to the Hecht Prize submission portal Thank You page, which will give you your order reference number and provide you with a button to upload your manuscript. You will also receive an email with your order details (if you do not receive this email please check your Spam folder);
   (d) Clicking the Upload File button will allow you to to select and upload your manuscript;
   (e) Once you have uploaded your manuscript, a dialogue box will open to tell you that the upload has been successful. However, if you have browser scripts turned off then the dialogue box may not be visible;
   (f) If you do not see that dialogue box, and want to confirm that your manuscript has been successfully uploaded, you can do so using one of the following methods:

   (i) Reload/Refresh your browser and if the Thank You dialogue page does NOT show the ‘Upload File’ button but does show the name of you file at the bottom of the page this tells you the upload was successful. However, if the ‘Upload File’ button is still visible, the upload failed, and you should click on that button and try again;

   (ii) If you have already closed the Thank You dialogue page, you will find a link in the order details confirmation email you will have received from us, and clicking this link will take you back to the Thank You dialogue page, from where you should follow the instructions given at [f(i)] above.

1. If you wish to withdraw your manuscript for any reason, please ‘click the ‘Withdraw Your Manuscript’ button below and complete the withdrawal form.
2. Please note that entry fees cannot be refunded.

Please click the link to download a pdf version of the hechtprize16 Guidelines.

1. All financial transactions are processed by Paypal, on their own secure server, and your payment details are never seen by The Waywiser Press.
2. When you submit a manuscript to the Hecht Prize, you are automatically subscribed to our prize newsletter. You can cease to receive the newsletter by clicking the UNSUBSCRIBE button at its foot.
3. Information about your submission, including your name, your contact details, the title of your manuscript, and the submission fee you paid, is held by The Waywiser Press for the five years required by UK tax authorities.
4. Submitted manuscripts will be deleted from our database within one month of the relevant contest’s closure.