2017 Chapbook Contest Semi-Finalists

After months of careful deliberation of over 500 chapbooks, we are thrilled to share our list of semi-finalists.

These eleven chapbooks expertly navigate the liminal spaces between one home and another, between elders and children, between people and other living beings, and ultimately, between self and other. They explore searing regret, unimaginable sacrifice, the bitter & soft of love, and the dangerous whimsy of nostalgia. They travel across landscapes, across generations -- from flights through the tangled wilderness of Alaska to wet heat of deep Southern America to the strange sadness of Lake Michigan. The connecting thread of these chapbooks are self and history -- how has our past informed our present? How does our lineage guide the way we plan for our future? What can we see of ourselves when we look to those before us?

We are honored to present this list -- the truths of these chapbooks have stayed with us, haunted us, in many ways.


Poetry

Chronicle the Body by Mick Powell

Cleaning Service by Beyza Ozer

Bitter Map by Crystal Boson

Oracle: a Cosmology by Destiny Hemphill

Sirens by Mitchell Glazier

Prose

Disfigure Studies by Asha Dore

Adolescence, Secondhand by Francisco Delgado

Dislocate by Simone Person

Woman Braces Herself by Danielle Zaccagnino

Lies and Saturdays by Cinthia Ritchie

Things That Cannot Be Tamed by Khristian Mecom


Beginning in the fall, we will do a weekly feature of each of these writers which will include an excerpt of their chapbooks. The winner and finalists will be announced mid-fall. We will open for our next chapbook contest shortly after releasing the news.

Thank you to everyone who submitted!