Thank you for your interest in Copper Nickel!
Please scroll down to order the current issue, to subscribe, or to submit either to Copper Nickel or to the Jake Adam York Book Prize.
To order or to subscribe, you'll need to register for Submittable if you're not already registered. (It's easy to do.) Note that subscriptions begin with the current issue unless you email editor Wayne Miller to indicate that you would rather wait for the next issue.
Copper Nickel accepts submissions Aug 15–Dec 15, Jan 15–Mar 1.
The Jake Adam York Book Prize accepts submissions Jul 1–Oct 15.
We charge a $3 submission fee for submitting to Copper Nickel. Submittable has raised their rates and we can no longer entirely absorb the cost of receiving submissions online. Please note that we pay the writers we publish.
We DO accept simultaneous submissions. If you need to withdraw part of a submission (a poem, a flash piece) but not the entire submission, please send a message through submittable indicating which particular pieces need to be withdrawn.
We do not accept work produced via generative AI. At Copper Nickel, we believe that creative writing is vitally rooted in the unique, creative expression of the individual mind—the self—and generative AI is the opposite of that. What’s more, AI models have been trained using the overt, unabashed theft of the labor of individuals—including many, many creative writers—without consent or appropriate compensation. We are fundamentally opposed to that.
The Jake Adam York Prize is open to poets writing in English, who live in the US or are US citizens, and who have published no more than one full-length poetry collection. (If you have a second book under contract, you are also ineligible.) The prize is a collaboration between Copper Nickel and Milkweed Editions.
The prize-winning poet will receive $2,500 and publication by MILKWEED EDITIONS. The prize is facilitated by the staff of COPPER NICKEL.
All entrants will receive a one-year subscription to COPPER NICKEL in exchange for their reading fee.
More details:
• Translations are not eligible, nor are previously self-published books.
• Self-published book DO count as prior publications if those books were at least 48 pages, had an ISBN, and/or received any sort of distribution.
• Work produced via AI is ineligible.
• Current employees of the University of Colorado Denver or Milkweed Editions are not eligible, nor are current University of Colorado Denver students. Past editors and interns of Copper Nickel and Milkweed Editions are also ineligible to submit.
• Individual poems in a submitted manuscript may have been previously published in periodicals and/or in chapbooks. If so, please include an acknowledgments page.
• All initial screeners for the prize will have published at least one poetry collection. Screening will be facilitated by the poetry editors of Copper Nickel (Wayne Miller, Brian Barker, & Nicky Beer). No screener will screen a manuscript by a friend, colleague, or former student.
• Our judge for this year's Jake Adam York Prize is Rick Barot. Barot is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Moving the Bones (2024) and The Galleons (2020). He has received fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation and has won the PEN Open Book Award, the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award, the UNT Rilke Prize, and the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. He teaches at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.
• The winning poet will be notified in early March, 2027. Milkweed Editions will publish the winning book in January 2028.
To submit:
• Upload a manuscript of poetry in word, pdf, or rich text format.
• Please do not include your name or address on the cover page. (We have that information through Submittable.)
• Please exclude any other identifying features in the manuscript that might make your identity clear. (If a poem includes your name, for example, you can replace the name with [author's name].)
• Please do include an acknowledgments page. (We will remove acknowledgments pages from the finalist manuscripts before they go to the final judge.)
• You CAN submit your manuscript to other book prizes simultaneously, including the other prizes facilitated by Milkweed Editions (the Ballard Spahr Prize, the Max Ritvo Prize, and the National Poetry Series). Please notify us and withdraw your manuscript if it wins another prize.
• For additional details, and for information about past winners, visit Copper Nickel's Book Prize Page. If you have questions or concerns, please email prize director Wayne Miller at wayne.miller@ucdenver.edu.
• The submission deadline is OCTOBER 15 (though we will continue accepting submissions through October 18 to accommodate anyone who has last-minute tech or personal problems).
(Please note that we are a small operation, and it can take a couple weeks to fill purchase orders. If you need your purchase expedited, please email Wayne Miller at wayne.miller@ucdenver.edu.)
(Please note that we are a small operation, and it can take a couple weeks to fill purchase orders. If you need your purchase expedited, please email Wayne Miller at wayne.miller@ucdenver.edu.)
(Please note that we are a small operation, and it can take a couple weeks to fill purchase orders. If you need your purchase expedited, please email Wayne Miller at wayne.miller@ucdenver.edu.)
(Please note that we are a small operation, and it can take a couple weeks to fill purchase orders. If you need your purchase expedited, please email Wayne Miller at wayne.miller@ucdenver.edu.)
(Please note that we are a small operation, and it can take a couple weeks to fill purchase orders. If you need your purchase expedited, please email Wayne Miller at wayne.miller@ucdenver.edu.)
(Please note that we are a small operation, and it can take a couple weeks to fill purchase orders. If you need your purchase expedited, please email Wayne Miller at wayne.miller@ucdenver.edu.)
(Please note that we are a small operation, and it can take a couple weeks to fill purchase orders. If you need your purchase expedited, please email Wayne Miller at wayne.miller@ucdenver.edu.)