Pushcart Prize Nominations
Each year, the Iowa Poetry Association's Editor and Associate Editors collaborate to select nominees from the newest edition of Lyrical Iowa. Please join us in congratulating and wishing the nominees success.
About Pushcart Prize Nominations
The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America. Since 1976, hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in their annual collections.
Winners of the Prize have included the likes of Charles Simic, Robert Pinsky, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, Andre Dubus, Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford and John Updike, to name only a handful. No wonder simply being nominated for a Pushcart makes you feel as if you've won something.
Each fall, editors from small magazines and independent book presses worldwide are invited to submit up to six nominations. The nominations may be any combination of poetry, short stories, essays, memoirs or stand-alone excerpts from novels. Translations, reprints and both traditional and experimental writing are also welcome.
2026 Pushcart Prize Nominees
"grief is a tuna fish sandwich" by Sandy Deyoe (Des Moines) -- Poem to come.
"Two-pew Chapel on Iowa Highway 6" by Lívia Stein Freitas (Curitiba, Brazil -- Grinnell College) -- Poem to come.
"Long Drive" by Kelly Madigan (Castana) -- Poem to come.
"Softly rise and gently fall" by Delia Ralston (Waterloo) -- Poem to come.
"penumbra" by Dawn Terpstra (Lynnville) -- Poem to come.
"Olympus OM-1 Snapshot, 1975" by Shelly Reed Thieman (West Des Moines) -- Poem to come.