We're down to the last few days of Open Competition submissions. A few reoccuring questions and answers:

Q: Should my name appear anywhere on the submission?

A: No. Not even the file name or the poem's title. Our system links your manuscript to your account but keeps that link blind as far as our readers are concerned. Help us keep them in the dark by leaving your name off the submission. This is pretty standard practice as far as contests go ... so please, no names/addresses on the poems. If you've already uploaded one with contact info in it, just leave it be.

Q: I uploaded my poems to ManuscriptHub but nothing else seemed to happen? Did they go through?

A: You can always log in to ManuscriptHub and check your submission status by clicking on the blue "Submission Status" icon at the top of the screen. If your submission shows up with a status of "Open," it went through; if not, you need to click on the "Submit Work" icon, select "Best New Poets 2008" and attach your poems. Remember that ManuscriptHub uses a two-step process because multiple magazines/contests take submissions through it. First, you upload your work to the system. Second, you have to select which magazine/contest to submit to ... in this case, Best New Poets 2008.

Q: When will you have results?

A: We'll send the poems off to the judge by the end of June, though we may get done faster than that. He'll send results back to us by July 15 or so. We'll notify you shortly after that--and we notify everyone at once.

Q: Can a magazine or writing program still nominate me?

A: No, that nomination period closed April 15, and we have already e-mailed all of those nominees on how to submit their work. There's no technical reason why we couldn't keep taking new nominations, but it would really complicate life on this end ... and there is not enough funding to have staff to process lots of exceptions. The bottom line is that we're only taking Open Comp entries with the $3.50 fee now. Program and magazine nominees should already have an e-mail with instructions and second with a coupon code, which they can use to submit their work. We don't mean to be inflexible, but if we're not systematic, problems tend to creep in.