Submissions for the 2027 CAAPP Book Prize will open on December 1st, 2026.

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 $5,000. Previous winners include Jacqui Germain's Bittering the Wound, Richard Hamilton's Discordant,  Carly Inghram's The Animal Indoors, E. Hughes' Another Way to Say Dying (forthcoming Aug 2027), Okwudili Nebeolisa's Terminal Maladies, Meredith Nnoka's, Les Portes, and Jasmine Reid's Interlocutor Goddess.

• The reading period opens on December 1st, 2026, and is open until Janurary 15th, 2027.
• 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: Danez Smith

About the Final Judge: Danez Smith is the author of four collections including Don’t Call Us Dead, Homie, and most recently Bluff, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. They are also the curator of Blues In Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes. For their work, Danez won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Danez lives in the Twin Cities and teaches at the Randolph College MFA program. Their fifth collection of poems  – Love, Time –  will be published in September 2027.