Submissions for the 2024 CAAPP Book Prize will open on December 15, 2023.

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, African American, and 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, and Richard Hamilton's Discordant, and Okwudili Nebeolisa's forthcoming Terminal Maladies.

2024 CAAPP Book Prize

• The reading period opens on December 15, 2023, and is open until February 15, 2024.
• 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: aracelis girmay

About the Final Judge: aracelis girmay is a poet who makes work across genres, including essays, collages, and picture books. She is the author of three books of poems, for which she was a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Her most recent work is the chapbook and was a flower, made in collaboration with book artist Valentina Améstica. Other recent work has been published in Astra, The Paris Review online, and e-flux. girmay is on the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund and is the editor-at-large of the Blessing the Boats Selections (BOA Editions). She teaches at Stanford University.