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The Missouri Review

Perkoff Prize Guidelines

Sixth Annual Perkoff Prize

$1,000 Fiction | $1,000 Nonfiction | $1,000 Poetry 

The Missouri Review is now accepting entries for the 2026 Perkoff Prize in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. This contest awards $1,000 each and publication and promotion to writers of the best story, set of poems, and essay that engage in evocative ways with health, wellness, and medicine as judged by the editors. All entries are considered for publication.

CONTEST CLOSED. WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN JUNE 2026.

Guidelines

  • Entries must engage in some way with health and medicine.
  • Entries must be previously unpublished.
  • Submit one piece of fiction or nonfiction up to 8,500 words, or any number of poems in 6–10 pages.
  • Winners will be published in a print issue of TMR.
  • All entries will be considered for publication (whether in print or online, as part of our Poem of the Week or BLAST features).
  • Multiple submissions and simultaneous submissions are welcome, but you must pay a separate fee for each entry and withdraw the piece immediately if accepted elsewhere.
  • Entry fee: $20. Entrant receives a one-year subscription to the Missouri Review in digital format (standard price $24) and a digital copy of the latest anthology from TMR Books.
  • All-access entry fee: $30. In addition to a one-year digital subscription and digital anthology, entrant receives access to a full decade of digital issues.

Eligibility

  • Previous winners of the Perkoff Prize and current University of Missouri students and faculty are ineligible.
  • Previous Perkoff Prize finalists and runners-up are welcome to enter again.

Submit

OR

  • By mail:
    • Postmark deadline: March 31
    • Please enclose a cover letter. Make sure your name, address, email, and phone number appear at the top of the first page of your entry.
    • Include a check for $20 or $30 (All-Access) payable to the Missouri Review.
    • Mention in your cover letter if you want your manuscript returned, and remember to include self-addressed stamped envelope with sufficient postage.
    • Mail entries to:
      Missouri Review Perkoff Prize [GENRE]
      453 McReynolds Hall
      University of Missouri
      Columbia, MO 65211

Winners

About the Perkoff Prize

Begun in 2021, the initial concept for the Perkoff Prize was a post-publication award (much like TMR’s Peden Prize) that recognized literary excellence in a piece that had a meaningful connection to health and medicine. The original benefactor of this prize, the late Dr. Gerald Thomas Perkoff, was Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Medicine in the Department of Family and Community Medicine (learn more about his life). His love of poetry and the possibilities in treating the vast, rich arena of human experience with health and medicine drove this desire to recognize and reward literary achievement. We began planning ways to revitalize the prize in the late spring of 2019 with no idea what the following years would bring. Now here we are, after a pandemic that has revealed the precarity—and resourcefulness—of human health and the endeavors of medicine to relieve pain and suffering. It is our humble hope that the Perkoff Prize is an opportunity for the artful expression of these infinitely diverse and collectively resonant human experiences.

Questions? E-mail question@moreview.com.

 

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