It’s a very exciting week for us at Black Lawrence Press, and we could not be happier to share our big news with you! We’ve selected the winners of both our 2015 St. Lawrence Book Award and our Fall 2015 Black River Chapbook Competition. And the winning manuscripts are…
For the 2015 St. Lawrence Book Award, Matria by Alexandra Lytton Regalado
Alexandra Lytton Regalado is the winner of the 2015 Coniston Poetry Prize and her work has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets. Her poetry and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in cream city review, Gulf Coast, MiPOesias, Narrative, The Notre Dame Review, OCHO, Phoebe, Puerto del Sol, Radar Poetry and elsewhere. Alexandra holds an MFA in poetry from Florida International University and an MFA in fiction from Pacific University. Co-founder of Kalina publishing, Alexandra is author, editor, and/or translator of ten Central American-themed books, most recently the bilingual Salvadoran poetry anthology Theatre Under My Skin (2014). Her ongoing photoessay project about El Salvador, through_the_bulletproof_glass, is on Instagram. Alexandra has a black belt in Kenpo Karate and currently lives in San Salvador with her husband and three children.
For the Fall 2015 Black River Chapbook Competition, Retribution Binary by Ruth Baumann
Ruth Baumann is a PhD student at Florida State University & holds an MFA from the University of Memphis. Her first chapbook, I’ll Love You Forever & Other Temporary Valentines, won the Salt Hill Dead Lake Chapbook Contest in 2014. Her second chapbook, wildcold, won the Slash Pines Chapbook Contest in 2015 & is forthcoming in 2016. Poems are published in Colorado Review, Sonora Review, Sycamore Review, The Journal, Third Coast & others listed at www.ruthbaumann.com.
We are thrilled to add these two amazing books to our list. Matria will be published in May 2017. Retribution Binary will be published in February 2017. We’re so happy to welcome both Alexandra and Ruth to the BLP family!
For the St. Lawrence Book Award, our finalists and semi-finalists were:
Fiction Finalists
On the Divide—Iver Arnegard
Magic for Unlucky Girls—A.A. Balaskovits
Consuming the Body—Christine Grimes
Wrench and Other Stories—Wayne Harrison
Your Nightmare—Joseph Holt
Love Will Keep Us Together and other fables—Brenda Liebling-Goldberg
The Paper Coast—Jefferson Navicky
Heart Pine: Stories—John Sirmans
The World of Dew and Other Stories—Julian Smith
Eyes in the Back of Her Head—Jill Stukenberg
Poetry Finalists
Doe—Aimee Baker
Hound’s Mouth—Libby Burton
Hermit, Wraith—Patrick Cantrell
The Things a Body Might Become—Emari DiGiorgio
I Refuse to Make This Beautiful—Eileen G’Sell
The Only Living Boy in Omaha—Shane Lake
Matria—Alexandra Lytton Regalado
City of Incandescent Light Bulbs—Matt McBride
Wet Reckless—Victoria Lynne McCoy
You Are a House, You Are a Hammer, You’re the Momentum of the Nail—Saara Myrene Raappana
Fiction Semi-Finalists
Summer People and Other Stories—Thomas Andes
The Slug Ride—Karen Bennett
Recall—Mark Connelly
The Bunny Suit and Other Stories—Carolyn Kerr
The Outskirts of Nowhere—Robert McGuill
The Distance Between Two Points—Jennifer Pelzek
Beyond the Lights and Other Stories—Ryan Shoemaker
Water Off A Raven’s Back—Jake Teeny
Every Single Bone in My Brain: Stories—Aaron Tillman
For Quality and Training Purposes: Stories—Sean Towey
Poetry Semi-Finalists
Mosaic of the Dark—Lisa Dordal
Night Crossing over the Pacific—Clara Changxin Fang
The Funeral Year—Kerri French
The Genealogy of Fire—Mary Kovaleski Byrnes
Elegy for the Visible—Darren Morris
High Ground Coward—Alicia Mountain
Foul Hook—Sarah Pape
After the Wake—Suzanne Roszak
Playing House on the Bones—Anna Sutton
Observational Gestures—Ruth Williams
For the Black River Chapbook Competition, our finalists and semi-finalists were:
FINALISTS (alphabetical)
Retribution Binary by Ruth Baumann (poetry)
Two Good Ears by Leah Browning (fiction)
St. Trigger by Aaron Coleman (poetry)
The Moon is a Wasteland and Other Stories by Daniel DiFranco (fiction)
The Other Body by Raki Kopernik (poetry)
Rumble Jack by Daniel Lynch (fiction)
Makes the Daughter-in-Law Cry by Danielle Mitchell (poetry)
Raju and Kishore by Gaurav Monga (fiction)
Dear Fox, Dear Barn by GennaRose Nethercott and Ben Clark (poetry)
Aluminum Necropolis by Nichole Riggs (poetry)
SEMI-FINALISTS (alphabetical)
These Contracts We Make by Ruth Baumann (poetry)
Mercy for the One Who Sharpens by Julia Bouwsma (poetry)
The Landfill Poems & Others by Patrick Cantrell (poetry)
New Histories by Amanda Chiado (poetry)
Fly Back at Me by Bernard Grant (fiction)
Hey Animal by Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez (poetry)
Thresh by Amy Elisabeth Hansen (poetry)
fifteen facades by Rose Hunter (poetry)
burying the illness corpse by Zoë Koenig (poetry)
Leaving Tracks: A Prairie Guide by Sarah Montgomery (poetry)
Dune Weasel by Caleb Nelson (poetry)
Graveyard, Burning by Amy Newday (poetry)
Arms Strong for Their Tasks: Stories by Dominic Preziosi (fiction)
The Umamist by Marc Sheehan (fiction)
Dust by Sarah Strong (poetry)
Propagation by Lesley Wheeler (poetry)
Blackjack! by Katherine Zlabek (fiction)