Created to honor the memory and literary legacy of Jennifer Martelli, this prize recognizes a chapbook manuscript distinguished by emotional depth, precision of language, and a bold, compassionate imagination. We welcome poems unafraid of contradiction, beauty, grief, humor, sensuality, or the strange intimacies of being alive. Above all, the prize seeks work that lingers—poems that risk honesty and transform experience through craft.
The winner will receive a standard chapbook contract from Lily Poetry Review Books and a $250.00 honorarium.
The final judge for the inaugural prize is January Gil O’Neil.
Jennifer Martelli was the author of The Queen of Queens, named a “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book and winner of the Italian American Studies Association Book Award, and My Tarantella, also named a “Must Read,” and chosen a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. She wrote the chapbooks All Things are Born to Change Their Shapes, In the Year of Ferraro, and After Bird. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets, “Poem-a-Day,” “”Poetry,” “Plume,” “The Tahoma Literary Review,” “Scoundrel Time,” “Verse Daily,” “Iron Horse Review,” and elsewhere. Martelli received fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Her most recent book Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2024) was long listed for the Massachusetts Book Award. Of this book, January Gill O’Neil writes, “In this striking collection of poems, Jennifer Martelli delves deep into the human psyche, exploring themes of desire, self-destruction, and the complexities of human existence. From suffocation to snakes, moon jellyfish to Marcia Brady, Martelli’s Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree fearlessly confronts the layers of anxiety that shroud our lives, leaving us spellbound with her poignant observations. Through vivid imagery and visceral language, she invites readers to confront their own anxieties, exploring the intricate emotions that shape our perceptions of the world. Brava to this skilled and necessary poet! This is the book we have been waiting for.” —January Gill O’Neil, author of Glitter Road.
About the Judge: January Gill O’Neil
January Gill O’Neil is a poet whose work explores the afterlives of history in American landscapes and intimate lives. Her poems trace how place, memory, and moral inheritance shape identity across generations, joining lyric precision with documentary attention and restraint.
She is the author of four poetry collections published by CavanKerry Press: Glitter Road (2024), Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009). Glitter Road received the 2024 Poetry by the Sea Best Book Award and the Julia Ward Howe Prize and was a finalist for several honors, including the Massachusetts Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Poetry, The Nation, American Poetry Review, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series.
A Cave Canem fellow, O’Neil is a professor at Salem State University and teaches graduate poetry writing in the summer program at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. She served as executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival from 2012 to 2018 and was the 2019–2020 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. She is a former chair of the AWP Board of Directors and its longest-serving current board member. She earned her B.A. at Old Dominion University and her M.F.A. at New York University.
Submission guidelines for The Jennifer Martelli Chapbook Award can be found on Submittable (Lily Poetry Review Submission Manager) and below.]]
Manuscript Requirements:
Previously unpublished, chapbook-length poetry (18–32 pages, but shorter or longer is acceptable).
Must include a table of contents.
Individual poems may have been previously published, but the chapbook as a whole must be unpublished.
AI must not be used in the creation of this work.
Each manuscript is delivered to the readers and judge as a blind submission and stripped of identifying information.
Translations and previously self-published books are ineligible.
You may submit multiple manuscripts, but each must be treated as an individual submission, submitted separately
Please let us know immediately if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
Your work will be disqualified if your name or contact info appears on the manuscript.
Final Judge: January Gill O’neil -Do Not contact judge about your manuscript at any time prior or during this contest.
Entry Fee: $15
Member of CLMP.
Submissions for the Jennifer Martelli chapbook prize are open annually from June 15th to September 15th.