2022 Hal Prize Now Open

Looking to set some writing goals for 2022? Then make the Hal Prize part of those goals! 

The contest offers publication in 8142 Review, the Peninsula Pulse’s new literary periodical. First-place winners in all categories – poetry, fiction, nonfiction and photography – will receive $250 and a mug made by Clay Bay Pottery in Ellison Bay. Second place receives $100 and third $50. The first-place winner in the photography category will also receive a gift certificate from Peninsula School of Art valued at $250.

Submissions are being accepted until Sept. 16, and the winning work will appear in the second issue of 8142 Review, to be released in November. The 2021 contest received nearly 900 entries, the most in the history of the Hal Prize. 

Not only will entrants have the opportunity to measure their work alongside a wide range of other writers and photographers, but it will be reviewed by esteemed judges. This year’s judges are Joshua Phillip Johnson (fiction), Angela Palm Hopkins (nonfiction), Adrian Matejka (poetry) and Lars Topelmann (photography).

Johnson teaches classes about writing, literature and the environment at the University of Minnesota-Morris. His work has been published in Metaphorosis Magazine, The Future Fire and Syntax & Salt, among others. His debut novel, The Forever Sea, came out in early 2021.

Palm Hopkins is the author of Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere but Here, which was short-listed for the Vermont Book Award and the Indiana Author Award/Emerging Author Award, an Indie Next selection, the winner of the 2014 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, a Kirkus Best Book of 2016 and a Powerful Memoir by Powerful Women selected by Oprah. Palm Hopkins has taught creative-writing workshops and classes at several prestigious writing conferences and organizations.

Matejka has written six books. His poetry collection The Big Smoke earned the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Among his other honors are fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Guggenheim Foundation, Lannan Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation and a Simon Fellowship from United States Artists. He is the Ruth Lilly Professor of Poetry at Indiana University-Bloomington and was Indiana’s poet laureate in 2018-19.

Topelmann grew up in Ephraim and graduated from Gibraltar High School, MATC in Milwaukee and Ohio University in Athens. He established himself in Portland, Oregon, where he photographed numerous award-winning campaigns for clients such as Nike, Adidas, Converse, Visa, Audi, Nissan, Ray-Ban and more.

Celebrating 25 years, the Hal Prize is presented by the Peninsula Pulse in collaboration with Write On, Door County.

Visit thehalprize.com to find out more and submit work.
Copies of the inaugural issue of 8142 Review are available for purchase at doorcountypulse.com/shop.