Announcing the winners of the 2016 Hillary Gravendyk Prize!

I recently judged the National Competition of the 2016 Hillary Gravendyk Prize (named after the late American poet; see my obituary for her here), counterbalancing the judge of the Regional Competition, Megan Gravendyk Estrella. As the Inlandia Institute posted recently on their Facebookpage, the winners have now been announced (I’ve included my selections in bold, although the list of finalists is a combination of lists by both judges). Congratulations to all! The two winning manuscripts (National and Regional) will be published next year. As I wrote of the winning (National) manuscript: “Traces of a Fifth Column,” the National winner of this year’s Hilary Gravendyk Prize, is a manuscript composed as of a series of dense, lively fragments across a wide canvas, each of which are more than capable of carrying the weight of the entire collection. “Traces of a Fifth Column” is a rich, meditative collage of essay-sketches that attempt to comprehend, through exploring meaning, language and being.

Thank you to all who entered. We are grateful for your words.

And thank you to our judges, rob mclennan and Megan Gravendyk Estrella, for choosing this year's books.

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National

Winner:

Traces of a Fifth Column by Marco Maisto

First Runner Up:

Letdown by Sonia Greenfield

Second Runner Up:

In This Housing by Mary Wilson

Regional

Winner

Gods Will for Monsters by Rachelle Cruz

First Runner Up:

Eyelets Under Sun by Lauren Henley

Second Runner Up:

Wild Embrace by Tim Hatch

Finalists:

Medusa Reads La Negra’s Palm by Elizabeth Acevedo

Nostalgia for a World Where We Can Live by Monica Berlin

Maybe To Region by Monica Berlin

FIGHTING EXILE by Terry Brix

Palace of Conferences by Andrew Cantrell

Nimrod in Hell by James Capozzi

Pity the Lifeboat Poems by Colleen Carias

Us Mouth by Nikia Chaney

A Feeling For Good Water by Elizabeth Chapman

Talking to Yourself Is Fine by Sally Dawidoff

An Aperture MC Hyland

Little Yellow Father by Kiandra Jimenez

Light Into Bodies by Nancy Chen Long

Brother Bullet by Cassandra Lopez

Reaper’s Milonga by Lucian Mattison

Of All Places In This Place Of All Places by Joe Milazzo

Working With a First and Second Language by John Miller

Yesterday It Poured by Tim Perez

Lostness by Cindy Rinne

Elegy with Trench Art and Asanas and Other Poems by Jane Satterfield

Generating the Wild by Tyler Stallings

[addendum] by B.P. Sutton

Whales in the Water Tank by Micah Tasaka

Ghost Limnology by Lisken Van Pelt Dus

brightness this by Franciszca Voeltz