HIGH FREQUENCY CONTESTS
HIGH FREQUENCY PRESS 2026
OUR HF BOOK CONTEST WINNERS!
Thank you to all who entered the Skywave Fiction Contest and the Morse Code Poetry Contest. It’s been an honor to read your work. We had entries come in from all over the world.
This was an extremely tough contest to judge. But we have found our two winners.
DRUM ROLL, PLEASE!
The Skywave Fiction Contest winner is Van Newell, for his story collection, His Eye Is on the Sparrow. Each story is set in a different state in the Deep South, with an eye to regional cooking and food.
The Morse Code Poetry contest winner is Elisabeth Murawski, for her collection entitled Fantail. The poet returns to the childhood that shaped her, ranging from questions of faith to the grief that comes from losing a child. Murawski notes: "Hope shows up for the feast in a faded dress."
THE SKYWAVE FICTION CONTEST WINNER
Van Newell has been awarded the Hackney Award, the Alabama Writers Conclave Award, and a Fellowship from the United States Department of Education America Reads Program. He has also been short-listed for a Pushcart Prize, a Humanitas Fellowship, the SideWrite Prize, and the Lascaux Prize.
THE MORSE CODE POETRY CONTEST WINNER
Elisabeth Murawski is the author of the recently published Alias Irene, as well as Heiress (Poetry Society of Virginia Award), Zorba’s Daughter (May Swenson Poetry Award), Moon and Mercury, and four chapbooks. Still Life with Timex won the Robert Phillips Chapbook Prize.
ABOUT OUR CONTESTS
Are you ready to submit your full-length manuscript to High Frequency Press? We’re excited to read your work. Dazzle us, astonish us. Try something new.
Winners in both categories receive $1500 and more. It is $35 to enter.
Skywave winners will be published by HFP and receive 25 copies and publication plus film and television agent referrals. Morse Code winners will also be published by HF and receive 25 copies; in lieu of agents, they will also get 15 poems published in Light Speed. If a Skywave winner would rather opt to be published in Light Speed than the agent referrals, that’s fine. We’ll work with the winner on that.
We accept .doc and .docx files. International entries are welcome. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, provided we're notified upon publication elsewhere. Entrants have no submission entry limit. Each submission is carefully considered for publication.
For the Skywave Fiction Contest, please submit a novel or short story collection of 110K words or less. For the Morse Code Poetry Contest, manuscripts must be 90 pages of poetry or less.
Please submit previously unpublished work only. (Poets and short story writers may include previously published poems in their collection; same with short story writers. HFP does not want to publish a book that has already been published.) Any size print run or online publication of a full book (including self-publishing, blogs and/or social networking or video readings) disqualify an entry. We no longer accept entries via postal mail. All entries must come to us via Submittable; entry buttons are below.
High Frequency retains standard first publication rights; all rights revert to the writer six months after publication. Writers must be at least eighteen years of age to enter.
Contests are judged by Shanna McNair and Scott Wolven. Please submit writing that the judges have not read. Writers who have directly worked with either judge (via The Writer’s Hotel, The New Guard or other venue) may not enter that same novel, short story collection or poetry manuscript for the contest and will be disqualified. That said, poets may include single poems that have been read by TWH or TNG (just not full, previously TWH-workshopped collections. It is the same for short story collection writers: those writers may submit a story that has been previously read but not a full collection that has been previously read.)
OUR NEXT CONTEST DATES ARE TBA.