We Will Burn Your Book

Guidelines

The Dante Award seeks bold and adventurous new works in poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction to produce as a printed work and ultimately burn, unread, in a trash can or other suitable receptacle. The winning text will receive a limited-run book publication* and the author will receive no cash award. The grand-prize winner will have one copy of the book printed, bound, and set on fire in a trash can. The two runner-up winners will have a pdf version of the text printed out on copy paper and set on fire in a trash can. The winning texts will not be posted for sale or distributed to anyone in any physical or digital medium. A blurb for each winning text (sourced by the press) and a link to the author’s social media account of choice will be posted on the website for six months following the announcement of the winner. The Dante Award accepts submissions exclusively through email. We are not able to accept via postal mail, or via Submittable.

We seek daring and inventive new works in fiction and poetry. No one else is looking for daring and new works, as far as we can tell. And, for the record, no one else is trying to burn your book, unread, in a trash can or other suitable receptacle    ”

All entries are read by our panel of prestigious judges and editors. All manuscripts should include a title page (listing only the title of the work), table of contents, and when appropriate, an acknowledgments page. Please do not include any epigraphs, biographies, author photos, or indices. Manuscripts should be paginated and formatted in 11pt Garamond only. You are welcome to include a brief bio or something about yourself in your cover note, but we will not read it.

Please see below for our strict submission categorization requirements:

• Microchapbook submissions: 12-28 pages only
• Chapbook submissions: 29-36 pages only
• Macrochap^* submissions: (note: this is a special category proposed for the 2021 contest only!) 37-40 pages only
• Novella submissions: 41-99 pages only
• Novel submissions: 100-299 pages only
• Novel+^* submissions: 300-499 pages only
• Tome^* submissions: (note: these submissions require an additional reading fee of $1.00 for every ten pages over 500) 500+ pages

^*For the 2021 Prize, we are not considering Microchap, Novel+, or Tome Submissions

Note that all submissions will ultimately compete with one another. The above submission categories are designed only to inconvenience the submitter. We will only select one grand-prize winner and two runner-up winners from the entire submission queue.

A note regarding previously published work: If any part of your submission has been previously published in any form (including publication with a press, self-publication, online/digital publication including blog posts and the like, published as a part of other component therein of another published work, and/or publication in a small, limited-edition print run), then the manuscript in toto is not eligible for submission. We seek daring, novel works of literature only.

• We do not accept simultaneous submissions. Please do not submit if you plan on submitting your work for publication elsewhere.
• Multiple submissions (the submission of more than one manuscript to the contest) are permitted (and encouraged!).
• Collaborative collections are welcome, although each part must be submitted separately by the respective author.
• Hybrid/multi-genre submissions are also welcome; please enter under the submission category that best fits your work.
• Prose category: Beginning with the Spring 2021 contest, our category previously titled “fiction” has been re-categorized as “high art” to accommodate fiction, creative non-fiction, lyric essay, and prose hybrid manuscripts.
• We will not consider works in translation although we highly encourage you to submit them.
• Any submissions, regardless of whether or not we accept them, are owned entirely by the Dante Award committee and can be sold or destroyed as per the panel's wishes. This is binding for ten years from the date of submission.
• Due to COVID-19 restrictions, rather than hosting the annual Dante Award burning party, the burning will be performed on Zoom to a small, private audience made to the panelists and a handful of their friends.

dante@neutralspaces.co

Submission Deadline

All submissions must be submitted by April 4^th. All submissions received after the closing date will still be considered until the burning begins.

Email Format

Our Panel

Virgil Kraust

Virgil Kraust is the founder and gatekeeper of The Dante Award. They enjoy over cooking their meat and reading autofiction. They are the author of several technical white papers and drink their coffee hot.

Rock Dundro

Rock Dundro is a poet, writer, and freelance jazzist from New Jersey, America. She joined the Dante Award to find the most innovative and daring works in literature to burn, unread in a trash can. She is a fan of learning about death. She has never written a book and has no plans to.

Barty Polarine

Barty Polarine is the author of fifteen books of experimental prose poetry and one chapbook of experimental prose poetry. He is a retired CIA agent and lives with his fifteen books of experimental prose poetry and one chapbook of experimental prose poetry in Tuscaloosa.

Mellow Miranda

Mellow Miranda is a poet and recovering chocoholic from Ontario, Canada. They have had poems in De-Poemer, Lunar View: Moon Mag, Wet Flower Quarterly Review, and Blug Magazine. Their debut novel, Evaporating Masses, was the winner of the 2019 and 2020 Dante Prizes.

Derleria Possom

Derleria Possom is an essayist from Lower Snodsbury on the Glemmingford. She is currently in her fifth year of prison for an armed robbery conviction. She only likes creative nonfiction. Derleria is very popular.

FAQ

Will you actually just burn the books?

Yes. We will not sell or promote them. We will make them and burn them.

Will you sell the ashes? Or something interesting?

What? No, we'll throw them away. Gross.

Why should I submit?

You shouldn't, we don't advise it