The Hillary Gravendyk Prize, Sponsored by the Inlandia Institute
2025 marks the ten-year anniversary of this substantial prize. This year’s judge is Brenda Hillman.
One National and one Regional Winner will each be awarded $1000 and book publication, and additional books may be chosen for publication by the editors.
The Hillary Gravendyk Prize is an open poetry book competition for all writers regardless of the number of previously published poetry collections. The manuscript page limit is 48 – 100 pages, and the press invites all styles and forms of poetry. Only electronic submissions accepted via Inlandia’s Submittable portal. Entries must be received between February 1 and April 30 at midnight Pacific Standard Time each year. Reading fee is $20. (Read below for fee waiver information.) The winners will be announced late Summer/Fall, for publication in the next year.
HILLARY GRAVENDYK (1979-2014) was a beloved poet living and teaching in Southern California’s “Inland Empire” region. She wrote the acclaimed poetry book, HARM from Omnidawn Publishing (2012), and the posthumously published The Soluble Hour (Omnidawn, 2017) and Unlikely Conditions (1913 Press, 2017, with Cynthia Arrieu-King) as well as the poetry chapbook The Naturalist (Achiote Press, 2008). A native of Washington State, she was an admired Assistant Professor of English at Pomona College in Claremont, CA. Her poetry has appeared widely in journals such as American Letters & Commentary, The Bellingham Review, The Colorado Review, The Eleventh Muse, Fourteen Hills, MARY, 1913: A Journal of Forms, Octopus Magazine, Tarpaulin Sky and Sugar House Review. Hillary was two-time winner of the Eisner Prize in Poetry and was awarded a 2015 Pushcart Prize for her poem “Your Ghost,” which appeared in the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She leaves behind many devoted colleagues, friends, family and beautiful poems. Hillary Gravendyk passed away on May 10, 2014 after a long illness. This contest has been established in her memory.
This year’s competition judge is Brenda Hillman (National) and Megan Gravendyk Estrella (Regional).
Brenda Hillman was born in Tucson, Arizona and has been an active part of the Bay Area literary community since 1975. She has published chapbooks with Penumbra Press, a+bend press, EmPress, A Minus Press, and Albion Books and is the author of eleven full-length collections from Wesleyan University Press, the most recent of which are In A Few Minutes Before Later (2022), Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire (2013), which received the International Griffin Poetry Prize, and Extra Hidden Life, among the Days (2018), winner of the Northern California Book Award.
A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Hillman has also received the William Carlos Williams Prize from Poetry Society of America, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
She has edited an edition of Emily Dickinson’s poems for Shambhala Press, co-edited two books by Richard O. Moore, and, with Patricia Dienstfrey, co-edited The Grand Permission: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood (Wesleyan, 2003). She has worked as a co-translator of three books: Poems from Above the Hill by Ashur Etwebi, Instances by Jeongrye Choi, and At Your Feet by Ana Cristina Cesar, all from Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press.
Three Talks: Metaphor & Metonymy, Meaning & Mystery, Magic & Morality, her first book of prose essays, was published by University of Virginia Press in autumn 2024.
She serves as Director of the Community of Writers in Olympic Valley and at as regular faculty of the Napa Valley Writers Conference. Hillman is Emerita Professor of English at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California. She has worked as an activist for social and environmental justice. She is a mother, a grandmother, and is married to poet Robert Hass.
Megan Gravendyk-Estrella is a Registered Psychiatric Nurse and Poet. Megan is a two-time winner of the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize and the author of the Seattle Young Playwrights prize-winning short play, “Good Evening Mrs. Gerfella.” Megan lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband, Jose, and his daughter, Sofia. Hillary and Megan wrote together their entire lives. Prior to Hillary’s passing, the sisters workshopped poetry and short fiction together, including many poems in Hillary’s book, Harm.
The details: One contest, two prizes, each award is granted publication and $1000: All entrants will be considered for the National Prize, and entrants who currently reside or work in Inland Southern California, the “Inland Empire,” will also be considered for the Regional Prize (Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, and any non-coastal Southern California area, from Death Valley in the northernmost region to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in the southernmost). If you believe you reside or work in an area that falls within the I.E., please select the “Yes, I live and/or work in the I.E.” checkbox on the Submittable form, or if you’re not sure, please contact the Inlandia Institute at Inlandia@InlandiaInstitute.org.)
Eligibility: Any American writer may enter the contest, with the exception of current colleagues and/or students, close friends, or family of the judge. Additionally, anyone currently serving in the Inlandia Institute in the last two years, either as an employee or on the Inlandia Institute Board of Directors, or is a close family member of the above, is not eligible.
Manuscript Requirements: Please submit 48-100 pages of poetry through our Submittable portal as a .doc, .docx, or .pdf. ***Submissions will be read blind, so do not include any contact information on the manuscript itself.*** Do not include a cover page, and do not attach an acknowledgements page. No revisions to the manuscript are allowed while the contest is running; however, if your manuscript is selected for publication, revisions may be submitted at that time. Please use a standard 11 or 12 point font. If there is a significant amount of non-standard formatting, please submit as a PDF to ensure formatting remains intact. Individual poems may have been published in journals, anthologies, chapbooks, etc., but the collection as a whole must be unpublished.
Submission fee: $20 per manuscript. Multiple submissions accepted but a separate entry fee is required for each manuscript submitted. Simultaneous submissions also accepted. To eliminate barriers to entry, we offer needs-based fee waivers. Write to publications@inlandiainstitute.org with the subject line “fee waiver request”.
If accepted elsewhere, please formally withdraw your manuscript from consideration via the Submittable portal.
Each winner will receive $1000, 20 copies of their book, and a standard book contract.
The manuscripts will be screened by MFA students from local colleges and universities.
The Inlandia Institute is a literary nonprofit and publishing house based in Inland Southern California dedicated to celebrating the region in word, image, and sound. In 2018, God’s Will for Monsters, regional winner of the 2017 Hillary Gravendyk Prize, received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.
Hillary Gravendyk Prize winners to date include Meg Reynolds, Anna Zumbahlen, Jennifer MacKenzie, Elizabeth Galoozis, William Barnes, Tiffany Elliott, Angelica Maria Barraza, Alexandra Martinez, Michael Samra, Jonathan Maule, Bronwen Tate, Adam Martinez, Michelle Peñaloza, Elizabeth Cantwell, Malcolm Friend, Rachelle Cruz, Marco Maisto, Kenji C. Liu, and Angela Peñaredondo.