2020 Alice James Award Winner Announced
We are pleased to announce that the winner of the Alice James Award is Aldo Amparán of El Paso, TX for his manuscript, Brother Sleep. He will receive $2,000 and his collection will be published in April 2022. The Editorial Board has chosen one additional manuscript for publication, as Editor’s Choice: Sugar Work by Katie Marya of Lincoln, Nebraska. Marya’s collection will be published in October 2022 and she will receive $1,000.
Aldo Amparán is a queer, first generation Mexican American poet born & raised in the sister cities of El Paso, TX, USA, & Ciudad Juárez, CH, MX. He is a 2019 CantoMundo Fellow, a finalist for the Alice James Award, & he has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize & Best New Poets. His work has appeared in, or is forthcoming from Black Warrior Review, Cherry Tree, Fugue, Gulf Coast, The Journal, Kenyon Review Online, Ninth Letter, The Normal School, Poetry Northwest, The Southampton Review, Washington Square Review, & elsewhere. He holds a BA in English & American Literature & an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso, where he teaches.
Katie Marya grew up in Atlanta, GA and Las Vegas, NV. She earned her BA in Spanish from Westmont College and an MFA in poetry from Bennington College. Her work has appeared in The Rio Review, North American Review, Southern Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, and Five Points as the recipient of the 2018 James Dickey Prize for Poetry. She was awarded a fellowship from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and her first full length poetry collection has been a finalist for the Noemi Press Poetry Prize and the Autumn House Rising Writer Book Prize.
Finalists for the award were: FAKE NOOSE by Benjamin Aleshire, Objects from April and May by Zena Agha, The Dandelion Speaks of Survival by Quintin Collins, Imperfect Map of Griefland by Anita Koester, Stage Weapons and Other Dramatic Objects by Matthew Minicucci, I Thought There Would Be More Wolves by Sara Ryan, Love for the Gun by Casey Thayer, and b o y by Consuelo Wise.
Thank you everyone who submitted their manuscript to this year’s award and to our editorial board members Andrés Cerpa, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Joseph Fasano, Elizabeth Lyons, Vandana Khanna, Suzanne Parker, Lynn Melnick, Cynthia Manick, Kevin Goodan, and Matthew Pennock. We’re grateful for the interest in and support of Alice James Books.
