Winner of the 2020 Perugia Press Prize

Winner of the 2023 Perugia Press Prize

THE BOOK EATERS

By Carolina Hotchandani

In Carolina Hotchandani’s debut The Book Eaters, the poet’s desire for agency over her life’s narrative is counterbalanced by her awareness that poetry is written precisely when life wrests control from us. This book, conceived in loss, examines shifts in identity due to Partition, immigration, illness, and birth. As roles evolve and dissolve, the poet witnesses the decay of language, artifacts, and history, yet these erasures are also generative: they beget poetic creation. The Book Eaters is a study in belonging as well—to our bodies, our memories, our stories, ourselves, our families, our cultures. Hotchandani’s poems interrogate what it means to be full or empty (of words, of the past, of another human being); they illuminate our inextricability from our creaturehood. Even as they explore unraveling—through the metaphor of insects that devour the very pages we produce—these poems are tightly woven into an exquisitely crafted, cohesive collection.

 

Carolina Hotchandani is a Latinx/South Asian poet born in Brazil and raised

in various parts of the United States. She holds degrees from Brown, Texas

State, and Northwestern universities. Her honors include fellowships from Tin House Writers' Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Napa Valley Writers' Conference. Her poetry has appeared in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly

Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Blackbird, Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner, and other journals. She is a Goodrich Assistant Professor of English in Omaha,

Nebraska, where she lives with her husband and daughter.

 

* The Book Eaters will be released in September 2023 *

FINALISTS:

 

Monique-Adelle Callahan, Rupture

Saba Husain, Elegy for My Tongue

Michelle Whittaker, Spoke the Dark Matter

SEMI-FINALISTS:

 

Caitlin Dwyer, In the Salt

Emily Jaeger, Slit

B. Fulton Jennes, Small Animals

Bryana Joy, Summer of the Oystercatchers

Abbie Kiefer, Almost Tender

Viola Lee, The Only Home

Lana Marilyn, Holes in the Water

Aria Pahari, Threat Perception

Barbara Schwartz, What Survives Is the Fire

Caroline Shea, Some Nerve

Sunni Wilkinson, Rodeo

Rewa Zeinati, I Had No Desire to Leave This Place

Thanks to each woman who submitted her manuscript/s 

& to the volunteers who helped read for & judge the contest!

Perugia Press Prize: A prize of $1000 & publication by Perugia Press 

 is given annually for a first or second unpublished poetry collection 

by a woman. The next deadline is November 15, 2023.

Winner of the 2020 Perugia Press PrizeAPress for the 2020 Perugia Press Prize winner Per

Perugia Press at AWP: March 8-11

 

We are looking forward to being in Seattle with our poets, and YOU!

In addition to the poets reading at our offsite event Beerhall Bookfair on 3/8, we'll be joined by our just-announced winner of the 2023 Perugia Press Prize, Carolina Hotchandani, who will read a poem from her forthcoming collection. Come celebrate International Women's Day with us - see you in Seattle! 

 

Winner of the 2020 Perugia Press Prize

* Perugia Poet News *

Perugia poet Abby. E. Murray read from Hail and Farewell in Rattlecast #183. You can watch the recording of her talk about writing and military life, the story behind her beautiful book's cover, and hear her poems accompanied by text. 

 

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Hail and Farewell is also featured in CLMP's

2023 Women's History Month Reading List along with

Perugia poet Jenifer Browne Lawrence's Grayling and over 100 great selections in all genres. Check the full list here.

 

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Perugia poet Corrie Williamson is featured in the new collection Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry.

Corrie describes the book as a "marvel of eco-visioning,

part field guide, part poetry anthology, part art piece, full

of writers I know and admire, know OF and admire, and

look forward to falling in love with." 

 

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If you’re in or around Northampton, MA on March 7,

don’t miss this chance to hear Perugia poet Gail Thomas

read at the Forbes Library for Straw Dog Writers Guild:

 

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Congratulations to Perugia poet L.I. Henley! 

Her essay "Of Wormholes and Junk Monsters" was chosen

by Grace Cho as the finalist for the Ned Stuckey-French

Nonfiction contest at Southeast Review.