The River Styx Contest

The River Styx Contest awards prizes annually to exemplary works of poetry and fiction. River Styx editors carefully read and discuss contest entries and ultimately submit the strongest ten entries to the judges.

The River Styx Prize 2026

For our 2025 contest, Lisa Olstein will judge poetry and Bennett Sims will judge fiction. We will award one fiction writer and one poet a prize of $1000 each, plus publication in print and online. The work will appear online in January 2026 and in our spring print edition.

The entry fee is $20.

Works of fiction should not exceed 3000 words (approximately 12 typed, double-spaced pages). Send only one story, or up to three poems, per entry. Work must be previously unpublished. Previous River Styx contest winners are ineligible to enter. Writers whose work has appeared in our magazine or on our website in the past year are ineligible to enter.

If the work is a simultaneous submission, we ask that you notify us immediately upon publication elsewhere and withdraw the piece via Submittable. Withdrawing a submission will not result in a refund of the entry fee. The contest runs from March 5, 2025 through August 1, 2025. The winners will be announced on January 1, 2025.

All contest entries are read blind. The winner is chosen based on the strength and inventiveness of the writing, not on academic background, publication history, or any other accolades. Please do not include your name or any other identifying information on the work itself. Submittable provides features that allow us to read the work without seeing the contributor's name, contact information, or cover letter. Once winners are chosen, we can "unhide" this information to identify the winners.

Lisa Olstein, Poetry Judge

Lisa Olstein is the author of six poetry collections and two books of nonfiction. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, Lannan Residency Fellowship, and Writers League of Texas award, she is a member of the poetry faculty at the University of Texas at Austin where she teaches in the New Writers Project and Michener Center for Writers.

Bennett Sims, Fiction Judge

Bennett Sims is the author of the novel A Questionable Shape and the collections White Dialogues and Other Minds and Other Stories. He teaches fiction at the University of Iowa.