Leiby Chapbook Award

Each year, The Florida Review honors former editor Jeanne Leiby with the publication of a prose or graphic narrative chapbook. To purchase one of our previous winners’ chapbooks, please see our Store, and for more information about Jeanne Leiby, the award in her honor, and previous chapbook winners and finalists, please see our Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Series page. Reading a copy of one of our chapbooks, and reading about the award’s history, should give you a good idea of the type of work we’re looking for.

This year’s contest runs from September 1, 2024 through January 7, 2025.

All entrants receive a free one-year subscription to The Florida Review.

Winners receive chapbook publication, 50 copies of the winning chapbook, and $1,000 upon publication. All entries are considered for potential excerpt publication in The Florida Review or Aquifer: The Florida Review Online.

  • Submit up to 45 pages (double-spaced, MS Word for fiction or essay; PDF or jpeg for graphic narrative).
  • Contest manuscripts should not have your name or other identifying information on any page. Please note that if your name is drawn into a panel of a graphic narrative, it should be blacked out (temporarily, for contest submission purposes only). Submit a cover letter with your name and the title (or titles) of the submitted work.
  • Any combination of long or short stories, essays, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, or hybrid work–as well as graphic narrative–will be considered. We do not consider any poetry for our chapbooks at this time. Pieces may be previously published in journals or anthologies but must not have appeared in a published story collection or essay collection, chapbook, or single-author volume of any kind. Finalists with previously unpublished selections may receive offers of journal publication.
  • Graphic narrative must be black and white and in jpeg or PDF format. We do not print color interiors at this time.
  • Entry fee is $25.
  • All submissions will be considered for publication in The Florida Review or Aquifer: The Florida Review Online.
  • Simultaneous submissions are perfectly fine as long as they are withdrawn immediately upon acceptance elsewhere.
  • Winner and finalist announcements are posted on The Florida Review website in August, and publication is scheduled for the following spring.
  • Please be sure to select the chapbook category in Submittable.
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