PST Annual Festival and Contest

68th ANNUAL POETRY FESTIVAL

Poetry Society of Tennessee, in partnership with MTSU Write and Poetry in the Boro, held their 68th Annual Poetry Festival at the Academic Classroom Building, Middle Tennessee State University, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and virtually. We thank our plenary session presenter and Best of Fest judge Christian J. Collier and presenters Donovan McAbee, James Croal Jackson, Bryanna Licciardi, John Mannone, Claudia Stanek,Cynthia Storrs, and Kory Wells. Much appreciation to MTSU for use of their facilities for this event.

CONTEST & ANTHOLOGY
Winning poems will be featured in our next edition of Tennessee Voices Anthology.

Winners of the first-ever Tennessee Visions Cover Art contest are "Common Ritual" by Dorothy Chen, whose artwork will appear on the front cover and "Coming Storm" by Cynthia Storrs, whose artwork will appear on the back cover. Learn more.

Best of Fest winner was "Rest" by KB Ballentine. Tennessee Voices contest winners were "BLCKDOG’s BRNBOY HUM" by Kelly Falzone (1st), "Black Angels of Hamilton County" by Laura Gunnells Miller (2nd), and Short Cuts by James C Jackson (3rd). Get full contest results.

The society thanks presenters for the rich discussions and insights from the workshops and panel discussion. We appreciate you!

CHRISTIAN J. COLLIER is a Black, Southern writer, arts organizer, and teaching artist who resides in Chattanooga, TN. He is the author of Greater Ghost (Four Way Books, 2024), and the chapbook The Gleaming of the Blade, the 2021 Editors’ Selection from Bull City Press. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, December, and elsewhere. A 2015 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellow, he is also the winner of the 2022 Porch Prize in Poetry and the 2020 ProForma Contest from Grist Journal. Learn more at www.christianjcollier.com.

CYNTHIA STORRS Cynthia Storrs holds an M.Ed. from the University of Sheffield and has authored articles on biculturalism after teaching 25 years in Europe. Relocated from Colorado, she served on the board of Poetry West, Pikes Peak Poet Laureate Committee, and Pikes Peak Arts Council, which awarded her a grant for promoting poetry in area schools. Her first chapbook, GARDEN CLIPPINGS (Finishing Line Press), will be published this fall. Her poems can be found in the CO Poets website, Persimmon Tree, The Ekphrastic Review; 9 anthologies, Critique, and The Tennessee Magazine.

JAMES CROAL JACKSON is a Filipino-American poet working in film production. His latest chapbooks are A God You Believed In (Pinhole Poetry, 2023) and Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine and Micro-Press, 2022). His poems have been published in literary publications such as Rattle, Columbia Review, Whale Road Review, and HAD. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Nashville, Tennessee.

CLAUDIA STANEK‘s work has been turned into a libretto, been part of an art exhibition, and been translated into Polish. Her poems exist online, in print, and in her chapbook, Language You Refuse to Learn. She holds an MFA from Bennington College. Her most recent chapbook, Beneath Occluded Shine (Finishing Line Press, 2024), is now available.

KORY WELLS is author of two poetry collections, most recently Sugar Fix from Terrapin Books. Her writing has been featured on The Slowdown from American Public Media and won Blue Earth Review’s 2023 Flash Creative Nonfiction Contest. A former poet laureate of Murfreesboro, she nurtures creative community through her leadership with Poetry in the Boro, the Bloom Stage storytelling show, and the from-home creative writing program MTSU Write. Learn more at www.korywells.com

DONOVAN MCABEE is a poet, songwriter, and essayist. His work has appeared in The New York Times, TIME magazine, The Hudson Review, The Sun Magazine (US), Garden & Gun, Poetry London, and a variety of other places. His poetry chapbook, Sightings, was released as part of the Floodgate Series, Vol 7. His academic monograph Charles Simic and the Poetics of Uncertainty was published in 2020. Learn more at www.donovanmcabee.com.

BRYANNA LICCIARDI resides in Murfreesboro. She has an MFA in poetry (Emerson College), a Specialist Degree in higher education (MTSU), and a Doctorate in Education (MTSU). She works as an English and Women/Gender Studies lecturer, at MTSU. She is the author of the chapbook Skin Splitting (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and full-length collection Fish Love (Alternating Current Press, 2024). A multi–Pushcart Prize nominee, her works have appeared in publications like BlazeVOX, Cleaver Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, and Peacock Journal.

JOHN C. MANNONE has poems in Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, New England Journal of Medicine, and others. He was awarded the 2017 Jean Ritchie Fellowship and served as National Federation of State Poetry Societies 2018 celebrity judge. He has five full-length collections, five chapbooks, and his first short fiction collection, Dark Wind, Dark Water (Mind’s Eye Publishing, 2025). A retired professor of physics, he teaches mathematics and creative writing. http://jcmannone.wordpress.com

FESTIVAL PARTNERS

MTSU Write is a non-degreed, community-facing creative writing program that hosts local and virtual events, facilitates virtual writing groups, and offers from-home, one-on-one mentoring to writers of all experience levels in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and playwriting. Learn more.

Poetry in the Boro is a monthly open mic and featured reading series hosted in Murfreesboro. Founded in 2016, the mission of PitB is to bring poetry to the community and to offer a place for our community’s creative, unique voices in all styles of poetry and spoken word. Learn more.

FESTIVAL ARCHIVE

68th Annual Festival Contest Results
68th Annual Poetry Contest
Tennessee Visions Contest Results

Previous Festival Contest Results & Publication Acceptance

First place winners of all PST contests, unless otherwise noted, are published in Tennessee Voices, our annual anthology. Additional poems may be selected for publication at PST's discretion. See publications for information on how to purchase anthology editions.

Monthly Members-Only Contests
Looking for our members-only contests schedule or winners list? Please see member contests.