Topeka, Kan. - Kansas poets with book-length works published in the past three years (2022–24) are eligible to win the $1,000 Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award in Poetry. The annual award, rotating between poetry, fiction and nonfiction, is sponsored by the Thomas Fox Averill Kansas Studies Collection at Washburn University in Topeka, Kan., and the Friends of Mabee Library. Poets with a connection to the state of Kansas through birth, residence, education, employment or some other significant circumstances are eligible. There is no fee to enter.
This year’s judge will be 2022 HHKBA Poetry winner Michael Kleber-Diggs, author of Worldly Things (Milkweed Editions, 2021), which also received the Max Ritvo Prize and the Balcones Prize.
Deadline for submission is Feb. 15, 2025. For complete guidelines, please visit: https://www.washburn.edu/mabee/ksbookaward/call-for-submissions.html.
The 2024 Hefner Heitz Book Award in Literary Nonfiction went to Brian Daldorph for Words Is a Powerful Thing:Twenty Years of Teaching Creative Writing at Douglas County Jail. In 2023, Catherine Browder won the award in fiction for her story collection Resurrection City.
The Thomas Fox Averill Kansas Studies Collection—sponsor of the competition—is an eclectic, inclusive set of materials dedicated to the study of Kansas literature through the state’s folklore, history, geography, flora, fauna and culture.
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For further information, contact:Lori Hutchinson
Exec. Dir. of Strategic Marketing & Communications
Office: (785) 670.1711
Email: lori.hutchinson@washburn.edu
