2025 - 2026 Winners & Finalists
Winner:
The Years of Blood, Adedayo Agarau
Adedayo Agarau is the winner of the 2024 C.P. Cavafy Prize. He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University ‘25 and a Cave Canem Fellow. He is the Poetry Reviews Editor for The Rumpus. Adedayo’s debut collection, “The Years of Blood,” which won the Poetic Justice Institute Editor’s Prize, was published by Fordham University Press in September 2025. Adedayo is a creative writing Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California. He earned his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop ‘23.
Finalist:
Beyond the Watershed, Nadia Alexis
Nadia Alexis is a poet, writer, and photographer born to Haitian immigrants in Harlem. She is the author of the hybrid poetry and photography collection, Beyond the Watershed, which was a finalist for the 2026 Nossrat Yassini Poetry Prize, longlisted for the 2025 Maya Angelou Book Award, and a finalist for the 2022 Ghost Peach Press Prize in Poetry. She has been named one of Poets & Writers Magazine’s 2026 Ten Best Debut Poets.
She has earned numerous honors, including a Literary Arts Fellowship and Artist Mini-Grants from the Mississippi Arts Commission, a Mississippi STAR Teacher Award, and recognition as the Poet of the Year Honoree of the Haitian Creatives Digital Awards. A fellow of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and The Watering Hole, she holds a PhD and MFA from the University of Mississippi.
Finalist:
No Rhododendron, Samyak Shertok
Samyak Shertok’s debut collection, No Rhododendron (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025), was selected by Kimiko Hahn for the 2024 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and shortlisted for the 2026 PEN Open Book Award and the 2026 Nossrat Yassini Poetry Prize. His poems appear in The Cincinnati Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, POETRY, Shenandoah, Waxwing, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and the Jake Adam York Prize, he has received fellowships from Aspen Words, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. His work has been awarded the Robert and Adele Schiff Award for Poetry, the Gulf CoastPrize in Poetry, and the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Originally from Nepal, he is an Assistant Professor of English at Mississippi State University.
Longlist: A Love Tap, Bernardo Wade; Bloodmercy, I.S. Jones; Hardly Creatures, Rob Colgate; Late to the Search Party, Steven Espada Dawson; We Contain Landscapes, Patrycja Humienik; What God in the Kingdom of Bastards, Brian Gyamfi; Wild/Hurt, Meg Ford; In the Good Years, Laura Creste; The Same Man, Bobby Elliott
2024 - 2025 Winners & Finalists
Winner:
Self-Mythology, Saba Keramati
Saba Keramati is a Chinese-Iranian writer from California. She is the author of Self-Mythology (University of Arkansas Press, 2024), selected by Patricia Smith for the Miller Williams Poetry Series. Saba's work has been published or is forthcoming in Lit Hub, Kenyon Review, The Margins, and other publications. She serves as the poetry editor for Sundog Lit and a board member for RAWI.
Finalist:
Song of My Softening, Omotara James
Omotara James is a writer, editor and visual artist. She is the author of the chapbook Daughter Tongue, selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she is a recipient of the 2019 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize. She earned her BA from Hofstra University and received her MFA from New York University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, The Academy of American Poets and elsewhere. She is a fellow of Lambda Literary and Cave Canem Foundation.
Finalist:
Book of Kin, Darius Atefat-Peckham
Darius Atefat-Peckham is an Iranian American poet and essayist. Atefat-Peckham is the author of Book of Kin, which won the 2023 Autumn House Poetry Prize, and the chapbook How Many Love Poems (Seven Kitchens Press, 2021). He is editor of his mother Susan Atefat-Peckham’s posthumous poetry collection Deep Are These Distances Between Us (CavanKerry Press, 2023). His work has appeared in Poem-a-Day, The Georgia Review, Indiana Review, Shenandoah, The Journal, Rattle, and elsewhere. His work has also been included in the anthology My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (University of Texas Press, 2020).
Longlist: Auguries & Divinations, Heather Treseler; Cloud Missives, Kenzie Allen; Coachella Elegy, Christian Gullette; Good Dress, Brittany Rogers; An Inheritance of Drowning, Dorsía Smith Silva; The Palace of Forty Pillars, Armen Davoudian; Pentimento, Joshua Garcia
2023 - 2024 Winners & Finalists
Winner:
Saltwater Demands a Psalm, Kweku Abimbola
Born in The Gambia in 1997, Kweku Abimbola earned his MFA in Poetry Writing from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He is of Gambian, Ghanaian, and Sierra Leonean descent. He is a finalist for the 2021 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, the second-place winner of Furious Flower’s 2020 poetry contest, and has work published and forthcoming in Shade Literary Arts, 20.35 Africa, The Common, Obsidian, Sunu Journal, and elsewhere. He works as a teaching artist for the literary non-profit Inside Out Literary Arts, where he holds workshops in poetry and creative writing for middle school students in Detroit Public Schools. He lives in Detroit, Michigan.
Finalist:
It's Not Love Till Someone Loses an Eye, Clay Ventre
Clay Ventre lives and writes in New England.
Finalist:
I'm Always So Serious, Karisma Price
Karisma Price is an assistant professor of English at Tulane University. A poet, screenwriter, and media artist, she is the author of I'm Always So Serious (Sarabande Books, 2023). Her work has appeared in publications including Poetry, Indiana Review, Oxford American, Four Way Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, and elsewhere. She is a Cave Canem Fellow.
Longlist: Portraits as Animals, Victoriano Cárdenas; The Scorpion's Question Mark, JD Debris; Eggtooth, Jesse Nathan; Tender Headed, Olatunde Osinaike; Master, Simon Shieh; Masculinity Parable, Myles Taylor; I Am the Most Dangerous Thing, Candace Williams.
