Submissions for the 2026 CAAPP Book Prize will open on November 5th, 2025.

Founded in 2020, the CAAPP Book Prize is a publishing partnership between the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for African American Poetry and Poetics and Autumn House Press with the goal of publishing and promoting a writer of African descent. The prize is awarded annually to a first or second book by a writer of African descent and is open to the full range of writers embodying African American, African, or African diasporic experiences.

The book can be of any genre that is, or intersects with, poetry, including poetry, hybrid work, speculative prose, and/or translation. The winning manuscript will be published by Autumn House Press and its author will be awarded $3,000. Previous winners include Carly Inghram's The Animal Indoors, Jacqui Germain's Bittering the Wound, Richard Hamilton's Discordant, Okwudili Nebeolisa's Terminal Maladies, Jasmine Reid's Interlocutor Goddess, and Meredith Nnoka's forthcoming Les Portes.

The winning manuscript will be selected and announced in early spring.

2026 CAAPP Book Prize

• The reading period opens on November 5th, 2025, and is open until December 15th, 2025. (*Note that this is an earlier deadline than in previous years.*)
• Please submit a manuscript between 48-168 pages.
• Please submit your manuscript as a doc, docx, or pdf file.
• Only one manuscript submission is permitted per person.
• Final Judge: Ladan Osman

About the Final Judge: Ladan Osman is the author ofExiles of Eden (2019), winner of a Whiting Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, andThe Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony(2015), winner of the Sillerman Prize. Her poems have been translated into over 10 languages. Osman's photographs and experimental media have been exhibited by Paris Photo, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Arts Incubator, Ύλη[matter]HYLE, and the New York African Film Festival. Her films include:The Ascendants, Sam Underground, The Fly Collectors,andSun of the Soil. These films have played in numerous festivals and were awarded an ECU Award for Best Independent Documentary, and a Dikalo Award for Best Short Documentary, among other honors. She lives in New York.