Tupelo Press is especially delighted to announce that our judge, Traci Brimhall, has selected Revenge Bodies by Cate Peebles of Brandywine Valley, Pennsylvania, as the winner of the 2023 Snowbound Chapbook Prize! Cate will receive a cash award of $1,000 in addition to publication by Tupelo Press, 25 copies of the winning title, a book launch, and national distribution with energetic publicity and promotion. All manuscripts were judged anonymously.
Cate Peebles is the author of the poetry collection Thicket, selected by Eric Baus and Andrea Rexilius as the winner of the Besmilr Brigham Award and published by Lost Roads Press in 2018, and several chapbooks, including The Woodlands (winner of the Sixth Finch chapbook prize, 2016) and James (dancing girl press, 2014). Her poems have recently appeared, or are forthcoming, in The American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, DIAGRAM, Ploughshares, South Dakota Review, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. She coedits the poetry magazine, Fou (foumagazine.net), and can be found online at catepeebles.com. She is a museum archivist and currently lives in the Brandywine Valley on Lenape land.
Judge’s Citation
“Revenge Bodies is a stunner. Through bodies of humans, pythons, foxes, and worms, a personal mythos of madness and desire—and how to survive both—emerges. These poems are formally dexterous, employing everything from erasures to Bingo forms to lyric prose shaped by its shifting margins. And every form is soaked in rich language, a feast of the dictionary and the senses. The poems held me spellbound page after page as they “refilled the grave with breath.” This collection is spectacle and spectacular. It lit me up like a Roman candle.”
–Traci Brimhall
Our sincere congratulations to Cate Peebles, and to all of our finalists.
Finalists for the 2023 Snowbound Chapbook Prize
Arthur Allen of Edinburgh, Scotland, THE HAVOC
Emma Aylor of Lubbock, Texas, UNTITLED FIGURE 1.
Katie Berta of Tempe, Arizona, SEVEN SKINS.
M. Cynthia Cheung of Houston Texas, OCCURRENCE OF A DREAM TRANSLATED BY ANIMALS.
Abigail Minor of Aaronsburg, Pennsylvania, RHYTHM MAKE A RIOT.
Martha Ronk of Los Angeles, California, AT THE NEAR SHORE.
Danie Shokoohi, DUET OF CROWS.
Julia Thacker of Arlington, Massachusetts, ALL THE FLOWERS ARE FOR ME.
Rodrigo Toscano of New Orleans, Louisiana, FLIGHT PLAN.
Karla Van Vliet of Bristol, Vermont, BONE SCRIBED.
Kathleen Winter of Glen Ellen, California, MEDIAEVAL SENTENCES.
Abigail Ardelle Zammit of Lija, Malta, HER BODY WAS A PLACE SHE CALLED HOME.
Enormous thanks as well to our accomplished team of Preliminary Readers and our final judge, Traci Brimhall, whose next collection, Love Prodigal, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2024. She is the author of four other collections of poetry: Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod (Copper Canyon Press, 2020); Saudade (Copper Canyon Press, 2017); Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton, 2012), selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), selected by Michelle Boisseau for the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Award.
Our heart-felt gratitude goes out to all who sent us your manuscripts and who, by your writing, link arms in the tireless, solitary, and so-important work of making poetry. So many more manuscripts than we can mention here gave us countless hours of reading pleasure.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we hope you will consider letting us see your manuscript again, as our July Open Submission Period will open this summer. Thank you and we look forward to reading your work!