Collected or selected works qualify only if they include at least thirty new poems previously unpublished in book form with prior publication in print media being acceptable.
At the sole discretion of the judging panel, they may instead award the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry.
Born in 1910 in Stonewall, Texas, she worked in the cataloging department of the Library of Congress in the 1930s before her brother entered politics.
Bobbitt courted Rebekah with love poems typed on index cards and passed secretly to her under the nose of supervisors.
James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, is quoted as stating: "The family relation to the Library is a great love story and it is too good not to want to savor, commemorate and celebrate.