2025 & 2026 Winners & Finalists
Selected by Diannely Antigua
Winner:
these are the waterfalls in my head, JeFF Stumpo
JeFF Stumpo is the author of five chapbooks of poetry (most through Seven Kitchens Press), a survivor of psychosis and PTSD, husband to a PhD chemist, and father to an amazing trans son. You can find his literary updates at www.JeFFStumpo.com.
Finalists:
- Lung Hours, Jessica Purdy
- Dew Claw, James King
2024 & 2025 Winners & Finalists
Selected by Jennifer Militello
Winner:
Thorn House, Thom Schramm
Thom Schramm is the author The Leaf Blower (Blue Cubicle Press, 2016), as well as the editor of Living in Storms: Contemporary Poetry and the Moods of Manic-Depression (Eastern Washington University Press, 2008). His poems have appeared in AGNI, The American Scholar, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, and Smartish Pace, and have won an Academy of American Poets Prize.
Finalists:
- Song for the Memory Palace, Josh Nicolaisen
- Things in a Cup, Things on a Spoon, Sara Backer
- Lung Hours, Jessica Purdy
2023 & 2024 Winners & Finalists
Selected by Alexandria Peary
Winner:
Sky. Pond. Mouth., Kevin McLellan
Winner of the 2024 Granite State Poetry Prize for his manuscript Sky. Pond. Mouth., Kevin McLellan is also the author of: in other words you (2022 Hilary Tham Capital Collection winner); Ornitheology (Massachusetts Book Awards recipient); Tributary; and Round Trip. Kevin's book objects, Hemispheres and box, reside in special collections including the Blue Star Collection at Harvard University. Kevin's video Dick won Best Short Form Short at the LGBTQ Los Angeles Film Festival and it also appeared at the Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival, Berlin Short Film Festival, the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and others.
Finalists:
- There's no door to walk through if the house is destroyed, Mckendy Fils-Aimé
- Moody Dude, Mark Gosztyla
