PUBLISHING NEW WOMEN POETS SINCE 1997
 
 
Winner of the 2020 Perugia Press Prize
Winner of the 2022 Perugia Press Prize

AMERICAN SYCAMORE

By Lisbeth White

American Sycamore is an exploration of racial identity and the natural world, rooted in the mythopoetics of wilderness and ancestry as sources of trauma, grief, wonder, and tremendous resource. In pursuit of understanding the nuances of belonging and displacement in a Black mixed-race feminine body, Lisbeth White travels through mythic, biological, and geological landscapes, attending to the body and its beautiful and terrifying questions. Her journey manifests in a poetic helix of recurring bridges, trees, myths, origins, and awakenings. From the bayou, to Belgium, to Barbados, these poems traverse global terrain while interrogating the dark past/present of America. In American Sycamore, the poet examines the Black diaspora, the spiritual South, ancestral reparation, and the sacred feminine, inviting the reader into a deep conversation of seeking and recovery.
 
Lisbeth White (she/they) is a lover of the earth, writer, developmental editor, and elemental energy healer. As a writer, she has received awards, fellowships, and residencies from VONA, Callaloo, Tin House, Split This Rock, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, and Blue Mountain Center. As a healer and ritualist, she has facilitated community-based workshops utilizing arts and earth-based practices to connect artists, writers, and land stewards with social and healing justice organizations. American Sycamore is her first book. 

* American Sycamore will be released in September 2022 *

FINALISTS:
 
Ayesha Raees, Within Sky Kissing God
Christina Vega, Hand to Mouth

SEMI-FINALISTS:
 
Mary Ardery, They're Not Lying When They Tell You You'll Dream of the Dead
Monique-Adelle Callahan, Rupture
Anaïs Deal-Márquez, I Made You Pozole
Caitlin Dwyer, In the Salt
Stephanie Glazier, Of Fish & Country
Christen Noel Kauffman, Acts of Protection
Victoria Korth, The Granite Door
Alysse Kathleen McCanna, FishWife
Jordan Osborne, The Damselfish Year
Mira Rosenthal, Territorial
Jeri Theriault, Self-Portrait as Homestead
Theresa Vincent, believe breath, believe silence,
Maria Williams, Snow

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 is given annually for a first or second unpublished poetry collection 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, 2022.
 
Winner of the 2020 Perugia Press PrizeAPress for the 2020 Perugia Press Prize winner Per
Perugia Press at AWP: Save the Dates! 
 


 
Featuring:

Jacqueline Balderrama (Now in Color, 2020)
Abby E. Murray (Hail and Farewell, 2019)
 Rebecca Pelky (Through a Red Place, 2021)
Ida Stewart (Gloss, 2011)
Lynne Thompson (Beg No Pardon, 2007)
 
Perugia Press
PO Box 60364, Florence, MA  01062