Madden won not only the single-poem contest sponsored by "The State" newspaper (Columbia, South Carolina) and the South Carolina Poetry Initiative (with "Prodigal: Variations"), but he has also won the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, with "Signals", which was published by the University of South Carolina Press. More recently, Madden was selected as one of the top 50 New Poets by "Meridian Magazine" (which is published by the University of Virginia Press) for his poem, "Sacrifice," which was included in the "Best New Poets of 2007" anthology [https://web.archive.org/web/20120208100203/http://www.bestnewpoets.org/2007selections.html].