Coker Student Poetry

Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Student Prize in Poetry

Submission period begins: November 15, 2025
Deadline: January 15, 2026

The Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Student Prize in Poetry, supported by the Penelope Coker Hall/Eliza Wilson Ingle Fund of Central Carolina Community Foundation and sponsored by the South Carolina Academy of Authors, recognizes the talent of college student poets in the state of South Carolina.

The award is $250 and an invitation to be honored at a future SCAA event.

There is no restriction on form or content. Submit up to 5 unpublished poems (totaling no more than 10 pages).

Entry is free.

Authors grant the SCAA first publication and electronic reprint rights to prize-winning work. Authors retain all re-publication rights and are free to reprint the work in any publication, subject to acknowledging original publication in South Carolina Academy of Authors annual publication. The author guarantees that the submitted work has not previously been published elsewhere. Entries generated by AI will not be accepted.

We will accept entries in doc, docx, rtf, and pdf file formats.

Applicants must be 18-25 years old at the time of submission and enrolled full time as an undergraduate at a private or public South Carolina institution of higher education. In a change to the contest from previous years, applicants may now have an out-of-state permanent address, but they must be currently living full time in South Carolina while attending a South Carolina institution of higher learning (applicants will be required to list a South Carolina student address). Applicants also must not have won this prize in the previous three years.

Your name should not appear anywhere on the poems submitted. Include contact information with a brief bio in the body of the email. Submissions should be sent to [email protected].

This year’s final judge will be James Crews.

Questions about the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Student Prize in Poetry should be sent to: [email protected].

James Crews is the author of Unlocking the Heart: Writing for Mindfulness, Courage & Self-Compassion, and editor of several bestselling poetry anthologies, including Love Is for All of Us, a collection of LGBTQ+ love poems. He is also the author of six poetry collections and lives in Southern Vermont in the U.S. with his husband. For more info, visit www.jamescrews.net.