Introducing Our Preliminary Readers for the Berkshire Prize

As we begin to evaluate submissions for the 2017 Berkshire Prize, we are pleased to welcome several preliminary readers to our editorial staff.  This accomplished group of writers will assist with selecting the manuscripts that will be honored as finalists and forwarded on to our final judge, Aimee Nezhukumatathil.  

 

Preliminary Readers for the 2017 Berkshire Prize

________________________________________________

Traci Brimhall is the author of three collections of poetry: Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize; Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award; and Saudade (forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press); as well as an illustrated children’s book, Sophia & The Boy Who Fell (Pleiades Press/SeedStar Books). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Slate, The Believer, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, Orion, and Best American Poetry 2013 & 2014.  She’s received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Currently, she’s an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Kansas State University and lives in Manhattan, KS.

________________________________________________

John Gallaher is the author of five books of poetry, Gentlemen in Turbans, Ladies in Cauls (2001), The Little Book of Guesses (2007), winner of the Levis Poetry Prize, Map of the Folded World (2009), Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (with G.C. Waldrep, 2011), and In a Landscape (2014), as well as two chapbooks, and two edited collections, The Monkey and the Wrench (with Mary Biddinger) and Time Is a Toy: the Selected Poems of Michael Benedikt (with Laura Boss). His poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Poetry, Boston Review, Chicago Review, and elsewhere. He lives in rural Missouri where he teaches and co-edits The Laurel Review.

________________________________________________

Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American poet from the Southwestern desert. She is the author of Landscape with Headless Mama (2015 Pleiades Editors’ Prize) and Protection Spell (2016 Miller Williams Series, University of Arkansas Press). Her chapbooks include Lifeline (Glass Poetry Press) and Lieserl Contemplates Resurrection (dancing girl press). Her honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, a PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship, The Frost Place Latin@ Scholarship, The 2015 Lascaux Review Poetry Prize, The Pinch Poetry Prize, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best of the Net, Best New Poets, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, AGNI, Ploughshares, POETRY, TriQuarterly, Boston Review, Crazyhorse, Blackbird, and The Kenyon Review. She is Editor-in-Chief at Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and she lives with her family in New Mexico.

________________________________________________

Robert Huddleston is a poet, a translator, an essayist, and a lecturer in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. He grew up in Washington, DC, and West Africa and studied at Dartmouth College, the University of London, and the University of Chicago, where he earned a PhD in comparative literature. He is coauthor, with Alexandra Huddleston, of the collaborative artists’ books Lost Things and Amor Fati.

________________________________________________

Jennifer Moore was born and raised in Seattle. She is the author of The Veronica Maneuver (Akron, 2015) and a forthcoming chapbook, Imaginary Weather (Hermeneutic Chaos, 2017). Her poems have been published in DIAGRAM, Best New Poets, The Cincinnati Review, Barrow Street, and elsewhere. The recipient of fellowships from Artsmith and the Jentel Arts Foundation, she is an assistant professor of creative writing at Ohio Northern University and lives in Bowling Green, Ohio.

________________________________________________

Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer is a poet and installation artist in St. Louis. She is the author of Cleavemark (BOAAT Press, 2016), her first full-length collection, selected by Shane McCrae. Schlaifer has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2015, Georgia Review, AGNI, Denver Quarterly, LIT, Colorado Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Fence, and elsewhere. She frequently collaborates with other artists, most recently with Jeff Pike on the illustrated chapbook, Strangers with a Lifeboat, and with Cheryl Wassenaar on the installation Cleavemark Drive. Schlaifer is a compulsive baker and is also very handy with a pitchfork. Her work can be viewed at criticalbonnet.com.

________________________________________________

Sarah Ann Winn’s first full length poetry collection, Alma Almanac, won the 2016 Barrow Street Book Prize and will be published by Barrow Street Press in 2017. She is the author of four chapbooks: Portage (Sundress Publications, 2015), Haunting the Last House on Holland Island, Fallen into the Bay (Porkbelly Press, 2016), Field Guide to Alma Avenue and Frew Drive (Essay Press, 2016), and Ever After the End Matter (forthcoming, Hermeneutic Chaos Press). Other work has appeared in such journals as Codex, Five Points, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Massachusetts Review, and Tupelo Quarterly. She currently serves as Reviews Editor for Tinderbox Poetry Journal, poetry editor for Cider Press Review, and is the founder of Poet Camp, a roving residency for women writers. She lives in Manassas, Virginia, where she teaches poetry workshops and lives with her husband, two lovely dogs, and one bad cat.