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.

Announcing IPA's Pushcart Prize Nominations for 2021

The Iowa Poetry Association's Editor and Associate Editors have collaborated to select nominees from this year's Lyrical Iowa 2020 75th Anniversary Edition. The list of poems is presented in alphabetical order by author's last name. We also include page numbers in the anthology. Please join us in congratulating and wishing these nominees success.

• "Sonnet to My Students on the First Day of Class" / p. 115
  Allison Berryhill of Atlantic, IA
• "Turtle Shells" / p. 25
  Heather Ann Clark of Winterset, IA
• "Illness" / p. 32
  Jared Pearce of Oskaloosa, IA
• "On the Anniversary of Another Winter" / p. 19
  Shelly Reed Thieman of West Des Moines, IA
• "Dazed and Confused" / p. 115
  Erik Trilk of Marion, IA