The University of Nebraska Press is happy to announce that Maggie Smith will be the judge for the 2025 Backwaters Press Prize in Poetry competition. 

Maggie Smith is the New York Times bestselling author of eight books of poetry and prose, including You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, Goldenrod, Keep Moving, and My Thoughts Have Wings. Her next book is Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life, forthcoming in April 2025, which draws from her twenty years of teaching experience and her craft-focused Substack newsletter, For Dear Life. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received a Pushcart Prize and numerous grants and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. Her poems and essays have appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME, The Nation, The Atlantic, and The Best American Poetry. You can find her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet.

Submissions will be accepted April 1 through May 1. The winner will receive $2,000 and publication of their book. For more information, click here.

The 2024 winner is Wolves in Shells by Kimberly Ann Priest, which will be published in October 2025. The honorable mention is Persimmons by Kerry James Evans, which will be published in the spring of 2026. Both were selected by Tomás Q. Morín, the author of Where Are You From (Nebraska, 2024) and the memoir Let Me Count the Ways (Nebraska, 2022).

Founded in 1997, the Backwaters Press has published award-winning books by some of America’s finest writers. The University of Nebraska Press acquired the Backwaters Press in 2018, with its impressive backlist in poetry and prose that contributes to the cultural landscape of our state and region. As a general interest imprint of UNP, the Backwaters Press continues to plant its roots firmly in the Great Plains, delighting readers with literature of enduring value and consequence.

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