Winner of the 2018 Autumn House Chapbook Contest Announced!
Autumn House is pleased to announce that Epithalamia by Erinn Batykefer is the winner of the 2018 Autumn House Press Chapbook Contest! A big congratulations to Erinn and thanks to all the amazing poets who were finalists!
Erinn Batykefer earned her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the author of Allegheny, Monongahela (Red Hen Press) and The Artist’s Library: A Field Guide (Coffee House Press). She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Of the collection, judge Gerry LaFemina said: Of the many things I’m wowed by in Erinn Batykefer’s Epithalamia, what I appreciate most is how the poems enact a mind at work. They engage with startling language and poetic form the emotional oscillation of relationships—the combined beauty and peril that create the ecstatic state of self-transcendence. One might imagine it feels like “Somewhere, under miles of water // a chandelier swings slowly / above the ruin of a grand staircase // its tinkling crystals silenced” because isn’t that how we feel on the precipice of great love—beautiful and ruined? With their lyric prowess and meditative sensibilities, these poems are both moving and powerful the way our poetry should be.
Runner-ups:
- Ensorcelled by Amy Newday
- Sonnets for an End of the Midwest by Max Schleicher
Finalists:
- A Canticle for the End of the First Republic by Mark Svenvold
- Where the Sea is Quenched of Thirst by Geula Geurts
- Light changes in space by Kirsten Chen
- Cathedrals by Daniel Arias Gomez
- Speech Therapy by Olatunde Osinaike
- Going Home by Kirsten Abel
- Say What a River Is by Kathryn Hunt
- Body Talks by Sherrel McLafferty
-
The Desert Came Home by Bill Glose
