2024 Prize Season Recap

We’re proud to report that this spring brought more recognition for our books.

Here’s how the press’s 2023 titles and authors have been honored recently.

First, Diana Whitney’s Dark Beds was selected as the second finalist for the Poetry Society of Virginia (PSV) North American Poetry Book Award. Final judge Lisa Russ Spaar had this to say:

“Whitney’s rich, sensual, formally deft and often erotic poems of transgression and fidelity in realms domestic and beyond remind us that there is always a place in the Zeitgeist for the lyric poem of interiority and beauty. Whether delivering snacks to hungry first-graders and then rushing home to vacuum glow-in-the dark stars from the Berber carpet or swooning over ‘rapture without consequence,’ this is a speaker who turns again and again to the natural world for its lessons of indifference and transformation.”

Later in the spring, we learned that Mariella Saavedra Carquin’s Maps You Can’t Make was named one of three finalists in the poetry category of the Colorado Book Awards. The judges said that “the path the collection took was both inspiring and courageous,” praising the way the book “beautifully articulates moving through violence while also ending in hope,” how “each poem is tender,” and the fact that the collection features other voices, summing up with this:

“Moving across voices and languages, Mariella Saavedra Carquin confronts trauma and still finds hope.”

And May brought more good news: Mariella won the gold medal in the poetry category of this year’s IPPY Awards. (Fun fact: Hannah Lee Jones took bronze last year for When I Was the Wind!)

We couldn’t be prouder of our authors. Here’s to making more award-winning books! 🥂

We keep a up-to-date record of all the ways that our books have been recognized and honored here.