Announcing the Winners of the 2025 Poetry & Prose Contests
We are pleased to announce the winners and finalists of our annual Poetry & Prose contests!
Poetry Contest Winners & Finalists
WINNER
Rebecca Boyle, “Hero’s Journey”
From judge Steven Espada Dawson: “This poem unsettles the idea of a “hero” in a speaker who is self-aware, performative, and deeply vulnerable all at once. Its images travel inside a dream logic—”the potential of imitation / woodpaneling in recalling the cedar tree” (!!!)—where grief and irony share the same breath. I admire how the poem lets emotional numbness exist without trying to cure it, trusting contradiction as a form of honesty. By the end, the poem feels less like a journey than a loop, suggesting that every story of becoming is already haunted by its ending.”
RUNNER-UP
Chris Ketchum, “Update”
From judge Steven Espada Dawson: “Update” carries the weight of history. It moves through angels, prisons, war zones, and myth with a steady, almost restrained voice, as if devastation were just another weather system we’ve learned to live inside. What stays with me is its refusal to dramatize. The images are allowed to stand on their own, and that quietness makes them harder to look away from. This is so important. The poem feels deeply of this moment, but also tethered to older human exiles we’re still repeating.”
FINALISTS
William Cordeiro, “Rendezvous”
Kelly Gray, “Farmstand in Freestone, First Rains”
Gabrielle Grace Hogan, “Pockets of Desire, Surfacing”
Tyler Michael Jacobs, “[Yes, I abandon too quickly like]”
Fatima Jafar, “All My Treasures”
Chiwenite Onyekwelu, “A Brief History of Love”
Marshall Woodward, “Aria of my Infidelity”
Ziyi Yan, “can’t help myself!”
Prose Contest Winners & Finalists
WINNER
Ruby Simoneau, "Rabbit Heart"
From judge Morgan Thomas: “In addition to deft prose and astute attention to the calculations of childhood, this piece takes an all too familiar story of near-certain violence only to spin it at the last moment into a different tale—one of outwitting danger without managing to escape its effects or deny what it portends about the brutal seasons of life.”
RUNNER-UP
Mandira Pattnaik, "An Experiment"
From judge Morgan Thomas: “In a society where bodies are assembled (for a fee) from disjointed parts, this ambitious and funny story follows a disenchanted narrator who is unable to give up the desires—for power, youth, attractiveness—that undergird his unbearable world, which is, of course, our world.”
FINALISTS
Andres Cordoba, "Animals in the Forgotten Room"
Nicole Brogdon, "Band of Burlesons"
John Jeffire, "Angel"
Mel Lake, "Reset Request"
Astra Lincoln, "Nonsense and Sensibility"
Susan L. Lin, "Exchange Students"
Abby Neff, "The Sick Olympics"
Bex Pachl, "at the close"