New Voices - Jacar Press

Open Through July 1 – New Voices Series

The New Voices series is aimed at bringing diverse voices and perspectives to print. We will be looking for work by poets who write outside traditional expectations, from varied ethnic, gender and class backgrounds. Open to poets globally.

Submit 40-80 pages of poetry via email attachment to jacarpress@gmail.com

$15 fee can be paid through the Donate link at on our Contact page. Or pay by check at Jacar Press 6617 Deerview Trail, Durham, NC 27712.

Series Editor – Jaki Shelton Green

2016 Winner – New Voices
Raising the Sky by Howard L. Craft.

“Raising the Sky is unpretentious, attempts no lofty poetic experiments with heavy themes but rather surges with philosophy caked on the sneaker bottoms of young slickster/trickster wannabes, and top-shelf gold standard prose shuffled across army fatigue blankets. Howard Craft allows the reader to perceive the moments, landscapes, and particulars of his own brand of Southern urbanism. He takes us there. Place. Physicality. His poetry becomes the hushed drum carrying the meter of persistence, racial identity, and invocations of the immensity… in which the unavoidable are saddled hip to hip to joy and revelation.

These poems remind us that our ancestors continue to whisper in our ears, remind us that we are at the helm steering ourselves, on our own terms, through yet another Middle Passage.”

— Jaki Shelton Green

Series editor Jaki Shelton Green, a North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee, is the recipient of many awards including the North Carolina Award for Literature, Sam Ragan Award for contributions to the Fine Arts of North Carolina, and the first NC Piedmont Laureate (2007). She is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently Feeding the Light (Jacar Press).