Winner
Kelly Puig, The Book of Embers
Kelly Puig is a Cuban-American writer and interdisciplinary artist. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Brown University where she received the Weston Prize for best graduate work and the Frances Mason Harris Prize for best manuscript of poetry or prose fiction written by a woman. Her cross-genre debut, The Book of Embers, was selected by Amaranth Borsuk for the Essay Press Book Prize. Excerpts from The Book of Embers are forthcoming in De-Canon + Fonograf Editions Hybrid-Lit Anthology and Denver Quarterly. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Witness, Wag’s Revue, The Columbia Review, and Möbius Strip. As Creative Director, she co-founded Literati. She was selected as a 2022-2023 Artist in Public Art on behalf of The Boulder Office of Arts + Culture and is presently at work on a large-scale labyrinth made of prose.
Editors’ Choice
Toby Altman, Jewel Box
Toby Altman is the author of two previous books, Discipline Park (Wendy’s Subway, 2023) and Arcadia, Indiana (Plays Inverse, 2017). He has received fellowships from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Study in the Fine Arts, MacDowell, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He holds a PhD in English Literature from Northwestern University and an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His scholarly and creative work can be found in Contemporary Literature, English Literary History, Gulf Coast, jacket2, jubilat, and Lana Turner, among other journals and anthologies. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Beloit College.
Finalists
sidewalk & other neural networks of well-being by Adria Bernardi
Bitter Bitter by Ginger Ko
Crane by Tessa Bolsover
But Also This — Correspondences for Etel by David Buuck
Dayawati, Of Mercy by Serena Chopra
Consequences of A Heavy Heart by Jennifer Firestone
City of Toys by Lesley Jenike
Transanything by Ever Jones
Dispatches from the Land of Erasure: Essays and Conversations by Philip Metres
These Late Eclipses by Andrew Zawacki
Semifinalists
Afterimage by Spring Ulmer
Imaginary Present: Essays and Inventions in Quantum Poetics by Amy Catanzano
The Severity of the Perfect Circle by H. L. Hix
Tropopause by Joe Milazzo
Working Chaos Magic (or: Permission); A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction— by Wambui Wainaina