"Prentice Alvin and the No-Good Plow" won first prize in the long serious poem category at the Utah State Institute of Fine Arts in 1981.
Card published this poem in the August 1989 issue of Sunstone magazine; and reprinted it in his short story collection Maps in a Mirror.
According to Card he came up with the idea to write "Prentice Alvin and the No-Good Plow" while attending graduate school at the University of Utah.
According to Card he decided to try to write an epic poem after reading The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser in one of his literature classes.
[1] At the time Card was not planning on expanding "Prentice Alvin and the No-Good Plow" into a novel series.