Sunken Garden Poetry Prize 2015 Winners Announced

Tupelo Press is delighted to announce that Peter Stitt has selected Hadara Bar-Nadav of Kansas City, Missouri as winner of the 2015 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize for her chapbook manuscript, Fountain and Furnace.

The Sunken Garden Poetry Prize is a prestigious national poetry prize for adult writers. Established in 2002, the Prize has drawn submissions from around the country that have been judged by renowned poets such as Mark Doty, Martha Collins, Patricia Smith and Tony Hoagland. The winner receives a $1,000 cash prize, an introductory reading at the Summer 2015 Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, at which she will open for former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser (check out the Festival here), and, of course, a chapbook, designed, published, and distributed nationally by Tupelo Press.

Hadara Bar-Nadav
Hadara Bar-Nadav

Hadara Bar-Nadav is the author of Lullaby (with Exit Sign), awarded the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize; The Frame Called Ruin, Runner-Up for the Green Rose Prize from New Issues; and A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight, awarded the Margie Book Prize. Her chapbook, Show Me Yours, won the 2009 Midwest Poets Series Award. She is also co-author of the best-selling textbook Writing Poems, 8th Edition. Recent awards include fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Other Finalists:
Philip Schaefer of Missoula, Montana — Animalia
Treasure Redmond of Fairview Heights, Illinois — chop: 30 kwansabas for fannie lou hamer
Karen Kevorkian of Culver City, California — Improbable Proximities
Mark Wagenaar of Denton, Texas — Marrow, Dark Matter
Jane Huffman of Kalamazoo, Michigan — The Epistles of Oil and Water
David Rigsbee of Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina — The Takeaway
Steve Lautermilch of Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina — Walking a Sea Bed by Moonlight
Kai Karlson-Wee of San Francisco, California — Jesse James Days
Jordan Smith of Clifton Park, New York — Dream of the Quarry
Leslie Ullman of Arroyo Seco, New Mexico — The Noticing: A Crown of Meditations
Vandana Khanna of Studio City, California — We Are Always the Girls

Sincere congratulations to the winner and finalists and special thanks to all who entered this competition and, in doing so, help spread the word about the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, and who, by your writing, join in the tireless, solitary, and so-important work of making poetry. Submissions arrived this year from 47 of our 50 States, and from every continent on Earth, but for Antarctica.


See our past Sunken Garden Chapbook Winners