Winners and finalists announced for TFW’s 1st Poetry Contest

THANK YOU, dear TFW readers and writers, for sending us your work for the 1st Annual TFW Poetry Contest. Given the over 100 strong submissions, this was no easy selection process. So, after a lot of reading and thinking and reading again, we are absolutely thrilled to announce the winners and finalists, judged by the incredibly generous (and not to mention, brilliant) poet, Evie Shockley. In Evie’s own words, “Wow — this was harder than I thought it would be!  Much harder.” Without further ado, here is the list. Happy new year!

Winner: t’ai ford! t’ai’s work will be published in TFW on Monday, Jan 12, 2015 and t’ai will receive $200. We will also be publishing, in collaboration with Kore Press, a limited edition broadside of t’ai’s work. More information to come on this broadside!

Runner up: Camonghne Felix. Camonghne’s work will be published in TFW on Wednesday, Jan 21, 2015 and Camonghne will receive $100.

Honorable mentions: Coco Owen, Kimberly Reyes, and Shevaun Brannigan. Coco, Kimberly, and Shevaun’s work will be published in TFW on Wednesday, Feb 18, 2015.

Finalists: Sequoia Maner, Zanzooba Magdoos, Mahogany Browne, Veronica Golos, and JP Howard. We will publish selections from each of these finalists on Wednesday, Feb 25, 2015.

We would also like to send along special thanks to our preliminary judges Mariko Nagai, Kristen Nelson, Emily Kendal Frey, and Hannah Ensor. We could not have done this without you.

Evie Shockley is the author of two books of poetry—the new black(Wesleyan, 2011), winner of the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry, and a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006)—and a critical study,Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry(Iowa, 2011). Her poetry and essays appear widely in journals and anthologies, recently or soon including The Account, The Black Scholar, Boston Review, The Feminist Wire, FENCE, Jacket2, Waxwing, and The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry. Her work has been honored and supported with the 2012 Holmes National Poetry Prize, fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and residencies at Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.  Currently serving as creative editor on theFeminist Studies editorial collective, Shockley is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, NJ.