The Evanston Public Library invites submissions to the Thirty-Eighth Annual Jo-Anne Hirshfield Memorial Poetry Awards, judged this year by John Rybicki (pictured), a Michigan poet and teacher. The competition is open to all adult and high school age Chicago-area poets, and to all Evanston elementary and middle-school students. The competition's submission deadline is Wednesday, March 9, 2016; the prizes will be awarded at a program on Sunday, April 24, 2016, at 2 pm in the Evanston Public Library's Community Meeting Room. Winners will be invited to read their poem at this event which will also include a reading by the poetry judge.

The Jo-Anne Hirshfield Memorial Poetry Awards is funded by an endowment made in memory of Jo-Anne Hirshfield, who found pleasure and delight in poetry. Full contest rules and instructions for submissions may be obtained by going to epl.org/poetryawards or by calling the Evanston Public Library at 847-448-8650. 

Contest judge John Rybicki has published three books of poetry including his latest, When All the World is Old. He is also the author of two other collections, We Bed Down into Water and Traveling at High Speeds. His prose and poetry have appeared in Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Field Triquarterly, Ecotone, and in The Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies. Rybicki teaches poetry writing in Detroit schools through the InsideOut Literary Arts Project.