The South Florida Maureen Seaton Poetry Prize 

                     co-sponsored by Limp Wrist & SoFloPoJo 

                      Final Judge: Samuel Ace

• Samuel Ace is a trans/genderqueer poet and sound artist. He is the author most recently of Our Weather Our Sea (Black Radish), Meet Me There: Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don’t wash. (Belladonna* Germinal Texts), and Stealth with poet Maureen Seaton (Chax). Chapbooks include: What started / this mess (above/ground press); Our Weather Our Sea (Belladonna Chaplet #209); Madame Curie’s Notebook (with Maureen Seaton, Artefakta); Triple # 11: The Road to the Multiverse; and Triple #18: A minor history / of secret knowledge (with Maureen Seaton, Ravenna Press). Ace is the recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writer Award and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in Poetry, as well as a repeat finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the National Poetry Series. Recent work can be found in ex-Puritan, Poetry, We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetry; Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, PEN America, Best American Experimental Poetry, Baest, and many other journals and anthologies. A book-length poetic essay, I Want to Start by Saying, is forthcoming from the Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 2024. Also forthcoming in 2024: Portals (Ravenna Press), a hybrid work co-authored with Maureen Seaton.
• As active as our judge is in the poetry community, it is possible that submitters may have interacted with him.  To be fair, please do not submit work that you have previously shown, discussed, workshopped, etc. with the contest judge. 

1. The Prize for this contest is five hundred dollars $500.00. There is no entry fee. The prize will be paid to one winner, or, in the case of collaborative work, split among the collaborators. There will be up to three (3) honorable mentions.
2. Eligibility: This contest is open to persons who reside, either full or part-time, in South Florida.  For the sake of this contest, we have defined South Florida broadly as the following counties: Broward, Charlotte, Collier, Glades, Hendry, Highlands, Lee, Manatee, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe, Okeechobee, Palm Beach, Sarasota, & St Lucie (The counties south of or containing Florida State Road 70) 
3. Guidelines: You may submit one (1) document containing up to three (3) previously unpublished poems. The total document length should not exceed five (5) pages in a standard 12-point font. All entries will be read concealed. That means your name should not appear anywhere on the document. Please only one (1) entry per submitter. 
4. Process: Limp Wrist & SoFloPoJo staff will read and sort the incoming submissions into yes-maybe-no categories. We expect this process to generate the "Long List." The readers will then lock in numerical scores for the work in the "Long List" which will yield the "Short List" that goes to our final judge.
5. Publication: The prize winner and honorable mentions will be published in SoFloPoJo and later reprinted in Limp Wrist. They will also be featured in a future Wild & Precious Life Series reading. All entries will be considered for publication.
6. Theme: there is no theme for this contest. Let the spirit and work of Maureen Seaton be your guide.

Thank you for thinking of SoFloPoJo as an opportunity to showcase your work. We are looking for Flash Fiction submissions generally up to 750 words. (Contact the FLASH Editor for exceptions)
We like flash fiction that inspires, stimulates, evokes, emotes, shocks, and surprises. We want to be transported by your words to wondrous and strange places, and familiar places that you have made new. Please send us your best work. Seriously, your best.
By submitting to SoFloPoJo you attest that your submission is your original unpublished work and you have read and agreed to the submission guidelines on the South Florida Poetry Journal website.
Francine Witte, SoFloPoJo Flash Fiction Editor