The Touchstone Awards for Individual Haibun are bestowed annually on haibun that represent noteworthy additions to English-language haibun in the estimation of a distinguished panel. The Awards are open to any English-language haibun first published in the current calendar year. For current and past award-recipients, please see the Touchstone Archive.
What Is The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun?
In 2022, as part of its mission to expand possibilities for English-language haiku, The Haiku Foundation added The Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun to the two other awards in its Touchstone Award Series: the Touchstone Award for Individual Poems and the Touchstone Distinguished Books Award. Collections of or including haibun have always been eligible for a Distinguished Book Award; this new Award allows for the recognition of individual pieces. For current and past award-recipients, please see the Touchstone Archive.
All awards seek to reward excellence and innovation each calendar year. Results are determined through a year-long nomination and selection process and are released the following year on April 17, International Haiku Poetry Day. Award recipients are selected by independent panels comprised of authorities in the field.
How Are Panel Members Chosen?
The panel consists of three members who are chosen by the Touchstone Awards Committee. The Committee chooses panel members who have demonstrated expertise in the haibun genre.
What Haibun Are Eligible for Nomination?
The Coordinator for the Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun solicits nominations during the award year from editors whose journals publish haibun. In addition, any individual may nominate two haibun, one of which may be their own. For the purposes of this award, publication is constituted by, but not limited to, first appearance in a juried or edited public venue such as a book, journal, online site, or contest. The Awards Committee reserves the right to determine whether a poem meets this criterion.
Nominations for the current year will open shortly after the previous year’s awards have been announced. Haibun written by the Individual Haibun Award coordinator and panelists are not eligible for nomination.
How Are the Winning Haibun Selected?
In the first round, the panel’s three members consider the entire roster of poems, with all identifying information (including names and publication details) removed, and nominate their highest-ranking haibun. These comprise the Long List. The panel then discusses the merits of the long-listed poems and votes for the poems to make up the Short List. In the final round, the panel votes to determine which of these will be recognized with Touchstone Awards. Once they have determined the awarded haibun, panel members write commentaries for each of them.
The entire process is anonymous: authors and citations for winning poems are revealed to the panelists only after they have written their commentaries for the winning poems.
How to Submit Nominations
The opening of nominations for the latest Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun is announced on our blog. The deadline to submit is December 31.
You may nominate no more than two poems per year, only one of which may be (but does not have to be) your own work. Nominated poems must be submitted with our entry form.
Entry Form: Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun
- Learn more about the Touchstone Distinguished Books Award
- Learn more about the Touchstone Awards for Individual Poem
Ethics Statement:
Each year, the Touchstone Awards (Books, Haibun, and Poems) have dedicated Coordinators. The nominations for each Award and their data (voting and panel discussion) are siloed from the other Awards and are only seen by that Award’s Coordinator.
Hence, Coordinators are eligible for Awards in the different categories in which they are not involved since they are not privy to that information. Likewise, the Committee Chair cannot access data unrelated to his Award section until the results are published.
The Panel for Award Year 2025
Peg Cherrin-Myers (they/she) is a self-taught poet living in Michigan. Betrayed by their Midwest Hoosier background, they drive a pickup and dip peanut butter sandwiches into chili. Their useless skill is inducing goosebumps on command. Peg is a 2021 Trailblazer Contest finalist, a 2022 Touchstone Award winner for best haiku, a 2023 best microfiction nominee, a 2024 & 2025 Touchstone Award winner for best haibun, a Pushcart Prize nominee for 2024 & 2025, and a 2026 finalist for the Rhysling Award.
Billie Dee is the former Poet Laureate of the U.S. National Library Service. A retired physician, she attended the San Francisco Art Institute in the mid-1960s and earned her medical degree from UC Irvine. Although she writes in several genres, her primary focus is Japaniform poetry. Her work has received numerous awards, and she values editing and workshopping with poets across the international haikai community. A native Californian, she now divides her time between the Pacific Northwest and New Mexico. She publishes online and off.
Website: Kiku Makura
Albuquerque poet and artist Scott Wiggerman is the author of four books of poetry, including his newest, Beginning and Ending with Emily: Ghazals and Golden Shovels, a collection inspired by lines and themes of Emily Dickinson. Wiggerman is the co-organizer of the annual Albuquerque Poets’ Picnic with its focus on haiku at Albuquerque’s Open Space Visitor Center, as well as co-editor for two decades at Dos Gatos Press, which has produced numerous books of Southwestern U.S. poetry, including the most recent, Light and Dark: Southwestern Aubades and Nocturnes. He chairs ABQ-Haiku, the local chapter of the Haiku Society of America, has been nominated for numerous Pushcart and Touchstone awards, and co-judged the 2026 Nicholas A. Virgilio Memorial Haiku and Senryu Contest.