Congratulations to Jessica Turcat, the author of Hunger House, the winner of the 2023 Saguaro Poetry Prize. Hunger House by Jessica Turcat explores the demands and promises of mortality as an observation. The midwestern rural voice of the collection establishes in minute detail the role of being alone in loneliness and finding the feminine in feminist. Turcat […]
Deadline Extended! $1200 Prizes! That’s Right, our flagship summer Writing contest judges are giving you an extra 11 days to polish those stories and poems so you can enter. New Deadline 8/31/21 What you get (if you win) $1200 and publication in The Ocotillo Review. $100 and publication for the runner-up! (if you don’t win) […]
KB Brookins wins 2021 Saguaro Poetry Prize Ire’ne Lara Silva selected How to Identify Yourself with a Wound by Austin poet KB Brookins as the winner of the 2021 Saguaro Poetry Prize. They receive $1200 and publication by Kallisto Gaia Press. KB is a Black queer genderless poet, educator, organizer, and student affairs professional. They have earned many fellowships and […]
Contest Judge, Chip Dameron, has selected The Winner, Runner up, and two Honorable Mentions from over 640 poems entered in the 2020 Julia Darling Memorial Poetry Prize. All four poets will receive prize money and publication in The Ocotillo Review Volume 5.1 releasing on February 8, 2021. Top Honors go to Partridge Boswell of Woodstock, Vermont for […]
The Julia Darling Memorial Poetry Prize and The Chester B. Himes Memorial Fiction Prize will now close for submissions at midnight on August 31, 2019 We know it’s summer. It’s HOT! Everyone is moving a little slower. Here’s an idea! Stay in and air conditioned space of your choice and finish that mind-blowing story or […]
loves literary art like this ekphrastic poem by Gerald Wagoner VERMEER’S LAUGHING GIRL I envy the officer seated between the viewer and the girl apposed, her arms at rest on the table, a stemmed glass in one hand, the nearer extended toward him, soft palm up. The man, madder bulk casually wallward, holds her in […]
The Ocotillo Review V 3.2 In these times it can be challenging to support the status quo. In so many ways the seams of our social fabric are being stressed to the point of disintegration. When I heard these two poems by women express these viewpoints so drastically different but so emphatically powerful I knew […]