Winner of the 2025 Autumn House Poetry Prize
Autumn House is excited to announce the winner of our 2025 Poetry Prize: REDWORK by Laurie Ann Guerrero, selected by Matthew Olzmann! This book will be published in October 2026.
Poet and essayist, Laurie Ann Guerrero was born and raised in the Southside of San Antonio. Poet Laureate of San Antonio (2014-16) and Poet Laureate of Texas (2016-2017), she is the author of four collections including Babies under the Skin (Panhandler 2008), A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), A Crown for Gumecindo–a collaboration with visual artist, Maceo Montoya (Aztlan Libre Press, 2015), and I Have Eaten the Rattlesnake: New & Selected (TCU Press, 2021). Guerrero holds a B.A. in English Language & Literature from Smith College and an MFA in poetry from Drew University. She is an Associate Professor in the Language, Literature, and Arts Department and is the Writer-in-Residence at Texas A&M University-San Antonio where she is currently at work on a novel set in both present day and 1800s San Antonio.
For more info, visit her website here.
We’d also like to congratulate the runner-up, finalists, and semi-finalists for their incredible manuscripts and thank everyone who submitted and trusted us with their manuscripts.
Thanks also to Matthew for serving as this year’s judge; it’s never an easy job and we appreciate his dedication.
RUNNER-UP
Singing Ground by Samantha DeFlitch
FINALISTS
Fables by Bruce Bond
Viscera by Sébastien Luc Butler
The Passion by Daniel DeVaughn
ALL THE BOATS I HAVE BUILT by Nome Patrick Emeka
Along the Shore of Death and Dreaming by John Kneisley
Book Content to Breathe Inside the Tree by Patrick Lawler
After Westward Expansion by Swati Rana
Debris Field by Rachel Rothenberg
What We Heard and Might Have Learned by Kelly R. Samuels
The Mother of Sons by Onna Solomon
SEMIFINALISTS
Braid The Dark Hair She Gave You by Kaitlyn Airy
Sleeping with Phosphorus by Emily Carlson
Manzana by Maritza Estrada
Future Epitaph by Leila Farjami
Animal-Hearted by Zoë Fay-Stindt
Out of the Branches, One by One by Laura Goldin
What the Land Remembers by Judy Jordan
Delivery Attempt by Hazel Koziol
Moonful by Winshen Liu
SUCH BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS WHO ARE THEY FOR by Lo Naylor
Some Things Are Left Unsaid by Isaac Pickell
Why I Am Not a Gravedigger by Amy Raasch
Nostalgia Doom Loop by Vincent Rendoni
deepcut by Malik Thompson
61.111 by MJ Weerts
King of Song by Matthew Zhao
