Announcing the Winner of the 2019 Pamet River Prize!

Congratulations to Shelley Wong and her spectacular manuscript As She Appears for winning this year's Pamet River Prize!

Shelley Wong is the author of the chapbook RARE BIRDS (Diode Editions) and a Headlands Center for the Arts affiliate artist. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, Massachusetts Review, and The New Republic. She is a Kundiman fellow and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, I-Park Foundation, and Palm Beach Poetry Festival. She holds an MFA from the Ohio State University and lives in San Francisco.

We have also offered publication to finalist Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach's manuscript 40 Weeks! The strength of the manuscripts that come in for the Pamet River Prize is breathtaking.

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach (www.juliakolchinskydasbach.com) emigrated from Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when she was six years old. She is the author of The Many Names for Mother, winner the Wick Poetry Prize (Kent State University Press, 2019) and The Bear Who Ate the Stars (Split Lip Press, 2014). Her newest collections, Don’t Touch the Bones, won the 2019 Idaho Poetry Prize, will be published by Lost Horse Press in Spring 2020. Recent poems appear in POETRY, American Poetry Review, and The Nation, among others. Julia is the editor of Construction Magazine (www.constructionlitmag.com). She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and is completing her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Philly with her two kids, two cats, one dog, and one husband, occasionally blogging about motherhood (https://otherwomendonttellyou.wordpress.com/).  

So much thanks to all the submitters and to those who nominated the work of others so that it might be considered.

Winner of the Pamet River Prize:

As She Appears by Shelley Wong

Finalists:

40 Weeks by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach (also offered publication from YYB) Before the House Went Silent by Dana Alsamsam Mythicana by Destiny Birdsong Gray by Alison Blevins Fallen Fruit by Despy Boutris Little Houdini Sara Brickman Something Small of How to See a River by Teresa Dzieglewicz I’m Only Praying to Believe What’s True by Elaina Ellis SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS Mag Gabbert Hell’s Belles by Allie Marini MusicfromaBurningPiano by Jill Mceldowney Washed Clean of Summer’s Dust by James Merenda Redress by Jessica Smith

See full list including semi-finalists here