Submissions for Naugatuck River Review are open for our 18th narrative poetry contest from July 1 - Sept. 1, 2026. Our final judge this year is Mary Beth Hines. Prizes are $1000, $250 and $100. All winners, finalists and semi-finalists will be offered publication in the winter/spring 2027 issue of Naugatuck River Review.  There is a $20 fee to submit, which covers the contest, shipping, publicity and publication of the journal for the year.

Mary Beth Hines is the author of “Winter at a Summer House” (Kelsay, 2021). Her poems appear widely in literary journals, with new work forthcoming in RockPaperPoem and Whale Road Review. She reviews books for Lightwood Magazine and other journals, with her most recent piece up at Cider Press Review. A member of the Boiler House Poets Collective, she participates in an annual Assets for Artists residency at the Studios at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). Https://www.marybethhines.com 

WHAT IS NARRATIVE POETRY? What NRR is looking for are poems that tell a story, or have a strong sense of story. They can be stories of a moment or an experience, and can be personal, fictional or historical. A good narrative poem that would work for our journal has a compressed narrative, and we prefer poems that take up two pages or less of the journal (50 lines max, not including spaces). We are looking above all for poems that are well-crafted, have an excellent lyric quality and contain a strong emotional core. Any style of poem is considered, including prose poems. Poems with very long lines don’t fit well in the format. See guidelines below for more submission information. Thank you for your submission!  

Here are our general guidelines:

PLEASE READ BEFORE SUBMITTING YOUR WORK.

We accept ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS ONLY through Submittable. 

There are two submission periods for NRR -  Open submissions (no fee) are Jan. 1 - February 1. Contest submissions are open July 1- Sept. 1 each year and there is a $20 fee which pays for the prizes, shipping, and publication of the journal for the year.

Please submit no more than three (3) unpublished NARRATIVE poems (for our definition of narrative poetry, see below). Please, no more than 50 lines per poem (not including stanza breaks) in ONE MSWord file, Times New Roman preferred (.doc or .docx or .rtf preferred, pdf if there is complicated formatting only. Please remove your name from your document, as the poetry is read blind. It will be checked before sending to readers. DO NOT use fonts other than Times New Roman, Georgia or Garamond 12.

Questions ONLY: Feel free to email us at naugatuckriver@aol.com. 

Simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you inform us right away if your poem has been picked up by another publication. Multiple submissions (submitting more than once per submission period) are discouraged, since Submittable now has a cut-off number of submissions. We claim first North American serial publication rights, so rights revert to the author after the initial publication period, just please give us credit.  We will only consider work that has not been previously published.  Member CLMP.

WHAT IS NARRATIVE POETRY?What NRR is looking for are poems that tell a story, or have a strong sense of story. They can be stories of a moment or an experience, and can be personal, fictional or historical. A good narrative poem that would work for our journal has a compressed narrative, and we prefer poems that take up two pages or less of the journal (50 lines max). We are looking above all for poems that are well-crafted, have an excellent lyric quality and contain a strong emotional core. Any style of poem is considered, including prose poems. Poems with very long lines don’t fit well in the format.