The International Book & Pamphlet Competition

Announcing the Winners of the 2025 International Book & Pamphlet Competition

We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2025 International Book & Pamphlet Competition. 

Congratulations to the two winners, chosen by Kim Moore: 

Ian Harker
for his pamphlet Gain Access

and

Annina Zheng-Hardy
for her pamphlet Abeyance

The Two Competition Runners-up are:

Sally Baker

and

Ilse Pedler

Congratulations also to the Highly Commended poets: 

Ophira Adar

and

Nathaniel Cairney

Ian Harker

For Gain Access

Ian Harker is a poet from Leeds. A director of Leeds Lit Fest and Communications Officer at The Leeds Library, his pamphlet A – Z of Superstitions was published by Yaffle Press in 2023, along with a debut pamphlet and collection from Templar Poetry. He was shortlisted for the Tempest Prize judged by Andrew McMillan and Patience Agbabi, and was a 2024 Ilkley Lit Fest New Northern Poet.

Photo credit: Mark Dolby

Annina Zheng-Hardy

For Abeyance

Annina Zheng-Hardy (she/her) is a poet and fiction writer from Sichuan and New York, currently writing between London and Newcastle. Her poems and short fiction are forthcoming or have appeared in Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, bath magg, Honey Literary, and elsewhere. She is a member of the Southbank Centre New Poet’s Collective 2023-2024.

Photo credit: Bridget Badore

Runners-Up

Sally Baker

Sally Baker works as Reader in Residence for The Reader, teaches poetry and is currently studying for a PhD in Place Writing Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. Poems have appeared in Pennine Platform, Propel, The North, Strix and the Nine Arches anthology After Sylvia. She was commended in the Magma, Manchester Cathedral and George Crabbe competitions. A poem from her pamphlet, The Sea and The Forest, published by The Poetry Business, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. She was born in Suffolk and now lives in the Pennines, where she grows flowers.

Ilse Pedler

Ilse Pedler lives in Cumbria and works part time as a veterinary surgeon. Her first collection Auscultation was published in 2021 by Seren. She is the poet in residence at Sidmouth Folk festival and one of the editors of Bending the Arc, a Substack of Thrutopian writing.

Highly Commended Poets

Ophira Adar

Ophira Adar is a London born poet with an MA in Writing Poetry from The Poetry School. Her work has been featured in Poetry Wales, Under The Radar, Butcher’s Dog and 14 Magazine. 

Nathaniel Cairney

Nathaniel Cairney is an American poet who lives in Belgium. His chapbook Singing Dangerously of Sinking was a finalist for the 2021 Saguaro Prize in Poetry, and his poems have been published in New Writing Scotland, Broad River Review, Midwest Review, Moria and other literary journals.

About the International Book & Pamphlet Competition

The International Book & Pamphlet Competition was the first of its kind in Britain. Now in its 39th year, it has launched the careers of many well-established and successful poets, including Daljit Nagra, Michael Laskey, Kim Moore, Pascale Petit, and Catherine Smith.

The winning collections are beautifully produced and promoted widely, and entered for all eligible awards and prizes. They are also sold in bookshops throughout the UK and through online stockists of The Poetry Business publications.

This year, the two winners have both been awarded a prize of £500 and will receive editorial support from The Poetry Business towards the publication of their winning pamphlets in Spring 2024. The two runners-up each receive an honorarium of £100. 

The winners, runners-up and commended poets will all be invited to take part in an online reading and will be published in The North. A celebratory reading and prize-giving for the winning poets will be held at Wordsworth Grasmere in early 2026. 

The 2025 Judge


Kim Moore’s pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves was a winner in the 2011 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition. Her first collection The Art of Falling (Seren 2015) won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her second collection All The Men I Never Married (Seren, 2021) won the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection.  Her first non-fiction book What The Trumpet Taught Me was published by Smith|Doorstop in May 2022.  A hybrid book of lyric essays and poetry Are You Judging Me Yet? Poetry and Everyday Sexism was published by Seren in March 2023. She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Ann and Peter Sansom are directors of The Poetry Business and editors of The North magazine and Smith|Doorstop books. Ann’s publications include Romance and In Praise of Men & Other People (Bloodaxe) and Peter’s include Writing Poems (Bloodaxe) and Selected Poems (Carcanet).

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Each and every year The Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition discovers and publishes exciting and substantial new poets…There’s no doubt that this is a career-changing poetry competition. If you’ve got a solid body of work that you’re pleased to have written, there’s nowhere better to send it.

The Poetry Trust

One of the career milestones for very many poets of note

Anne-Marie Fyfe

I’ve judged a lot of contests, but I can’t recall any where the quality of the poems – one manuscript after another – was so high

Billy Collins, 2015 competition judge