Mark Craver Poetry Award | Judge: Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
Winner: “may 29th” by Simonne Francis
I was compelled by this poem's dissonance: the mundane act of taking an Uber to a protest--as if it were a daily market--combined with the rising danger of being in close quarters with strangers with questionable politics. I could feel my own anxiety rising as I read on, wondering what will happen to these two? The poem pairs this troubling instability with the form of the prose block, just barely able to contain the tension that ultimately breaks away.
Runner Up: “YOU TAKE THE WINDOW SEAT TO WATCH THE COUNTRY” by Ian Cappelli & “Interstate” by Martin Mitchell
Joseph A. Lohman III Poetry Award | Judge: Hayan Charara
Winner: “it is what it is” by Faith Reale
“The pleasure of recognizing a described world is no small thing,” Mark Doty tells us in The Art of Description. “It is what it is” accomplishes this seemingly (but hardly) simple task. The poem adds to the pleasure of its sensory details another one of poetry’s harder-than-it-looks goals: bringing about a profound sense of empathy. Put another way: painful as this poem’s subject is, its art is restorative.
Runner Up: “Danse” by Victoria Mendoza & "chattel" by Simonne Francis
Mary Roberts Rinehart Poetry Award | Judge: Nicole Tong
Winner: “YOUR LITTLE BROTHER ASKS YOU ABOUT LIGHTNING” by Ian Cappelli
It is my honor to award the 2021 Mary Roberts Rinehart Poetry Prize to "YOUR LITTLE BROTHER ASKS YOU ABOUT LIGHTNING." I admire the world the writer has offered in this tight prosaic box that reminds me of a Joseph Cornell assemblage-- juxtaposing disparate images such as "the ditch the push-mower falls in," "the froyo place," and "father's secret pharmaceutical garden." The tug-of-war between enjambment and caesura imitate the back-and-forth between speaker and brother, answers and good questions.
Runner Up: “sugar fire, 2005” by Simonne Francis
Virginia Downs Poetry Award | Judge: Megan Fernandes
Winner: "Recent Developments in Set Theory” by Christian Stanzione
This stunning poem plays with the concreteness of a ladybug's rattle and the abstractness of both friendly and unnerving darkness(es). It is a poem which understands the invisible dynamics of trauma, its claustrophobia, its special relationship with breath and animals. What does the human try to do with trauma? Box it. Make it chronological. Give pain an order or archive.
Runner Up: "Love Rival" by Shane Chergosky
This clever, short poem envelops the reader in how loss changes geography itself. The heartbreak is at once terrestrial ("rocks" and "scree"), oceanic ("wash" and "lake") and finally, something of both water and land: ice, cut with spectral laughter. The poem moves sonically between consonant "l"'s and assonant "i"'s and as the speaker "rolls with the crush," so too does the reader, caught in the cyclical drama of the surrender, freeze, and thaw of heartache.
Mary Roberts Rinehart Nonfiction Award | Judge: Gail Griffin
Winner: "Pomegranate Girls" by Lena Crown
This ambitious essay conveys maturity and skill from the outset. Its weaving of family history with mythology is accomplished very gracefully, without belaboring the resonance but organizing and framing material so that the two strands speak to each other clearly. The essay embeds a history of sexual assault within a larger discussion of a complicated, profound mother-daughter relationship—an unusual perspective that requires considerable artistic judgment. And the author can shape and wield a sentence with bravura technique.
Runner Up: "Her Body as Petals” by Millie Tullis
The form of this essay is dazzling, demonstrating a familiarity with the vast possibilities of contemporary nonfiction. The author weaves together her own life with Plath’s and with critical response to Plath in a provocative, mysterious, ingenious way. Critical essay, personal essay, memoir—they all bleed together here, and who would want to separate them?
Alan Cheuse Nonfiction Award | Judge: Joe Bonomo
Winner: "Truth Tables" by Jenny Fried
"Truth Tables" is a remarkable essay, brimming with inventiveness, wisdom, and courage, open to the strange, powerful ways that we make connections among the disparate ways of knowing ourselves, and the world. To negotiate pain and trauma within the harsh lines of circuitry, to explore memory as infinite analog waves, is to remind the reader, as the best essays do, that writing can make surprising and poignant discoveries about the ways our lives, and our thinking, take shape in the world.
Runner Up: "Windfall" by Martin Mitchell
"Windfall" poignantly enacts an autobiographical paradox: the further we can get from our family, the more clearly we might see them. Here, "father" is both a dad to remember and a character to interpret, the writer deftly moving among remembrances, social history, and ironic humor. A brave and moving family essay.
Mary Roberts Rinehart Fiction Award | Judge: Diane Zinna
Winner: “Undertow” by Elizabeth Duesterhoeft
Reading “Undertow,” I felt I was climbing the salt-scuffed wooden steps of the lighthouse with young Sadaf. I felt the currents of air her mother left in her wake. I could see those floor-to-ceiling lighthouse windows clouded up by the family’s whispers. Full of lyrical language, mystery, and deep longing, this beautiful coming-of-age story trusted the reader all the way through to mesmerizing effect, allowing for different layers of meaning to rise to the surface at the story’s crushing end. An unforgettable story.
Runner Up: “Period Metaphors" by Delaney Burk & "The Big Stunt" by Jihoon Park & "Distance" by Matt Cantor
“The Big Stunt”
This was a captivating adrenaline joyride that balanced humor and despair in ways that reminded me in places of Donald Barthelme and George Saunders. Your ingenious use of IKEA—with its deceptive ease and store-map navigation anxiety—made a perfect metaphor for this troubled marriage and the narrator’s sense of longing.
“Period Metaphors”
I was won over with this piece from this story’s subtitle: For Carrie White, Beverly Marsh, and all the other women that Stephen King decided to write with too much nipple detail. This incredible story of a young girl losing her mother was a moving meditation on the changing versions of self she made and shed. And that ending. Wow.
“Distance”
This tiny gem of a story made me smile all the way through. I must have read it five times! Thank you for this story of connection, of our cosmic role in the universe, and how important it is to pet all the dogs.
Alan Cheuse Fiction Award | Judge: Madison Smartt Bell
Winner: "Cinema Road" by O. Dada
I admire these opening chapters of a novel for their powerfully realistic rendering of their West African setting and situation (specifically Nigeria is my best guess). This writer captures the physical background with strong verisimilitude and seems authoritative on the cultural complexity of the locale as well. The characters are strongly rendered and there is plenty of simmering conflict to drive a dramatic story. I look forward to reading the rest of the book when it becomes available.
Runner Up: "Behavioral Floriography" by Melissa Wade
Of the several interesting surrealistic/speculative stories submitted, this one appeals to me the most because of the unusual originality of the concept, and the confident, concrete descriptions of the most improbable phenomena.
Dan Rudy Fiction Award | Judge: Aaron Hamburger
Winner: “The Three Musketeers” by Kyra Kondis
The honesty and brio of the narrative voice of “The Three Musketeers” startles immediately, right from its energetic first line. With the intelligence and precision of an anthropologist, the story explores the complicated terrain of its characters' frenzied contemporary lives while also suggesting the depths of turbulent emotion roiling underneath.
Runner Up: “Venture Nothing” by Melissa Wade
“Venture Nothing” completely and convincingly inhabits the world it draws, creating a vivid portrait of time and place in clear, muscular prose. All this is rendered through the eyes of an eccentric, witty protagonist who’s surprisingly moving and always memorable.
Shelley A. Marshall Fiction Award | Judge: Ava Homa
Winner: "Grab-Bag" by Matt Cantor
"Grab Bag" is a bold tale about the complexities of desire and identity. It is told by an unreliable narrator as a meditation on how they started a life of self-deception and manipulation only to end with a second character discovering new truth about themselves. It was subtle, refreshing, and darkly humorous. To the anonymous winner, I offer my heartfelt congratulations.
Runner up: "Loggerheads" by Shellie Kalinsky
Witty, absorbing, and intense story.
For more information about the judges and contests, go here.
April 15, 2021
