2024 Alice James Award Winner Announced
2024 Alice James Award Winner Announced
We are pleased to announce that the winner of the Alice James Award is R. A. Villanueva of Brooklyn, New York for his manuscript, A Holy Dread. He will receive $2,000 and his collection will be published in February 2026. The Editorial Board has chosen one additional manuscript for publication, as Editor’s Choice: Scrap Book by Nick Martino of Los Angeles, California. Martino’s collection will be published in June 2026 and he will receive $1,000.
R. A. Villanueva is the author of A Holy Dread, winner of the 2024 Alice James Award and Reliquaria, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize (U. Nebraska Press, 2014). New work has been featured by the Academy of American Poets, Ploughshares, Poetry, and National Public Radio—and his writing appears widely in international publications such as Poetry London and The Poetry Review. His honors include commendations from the Forward Prizes and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, and Kundiman. Born in New Jersey, he lives in Brooklyn.
Nick Martino is a poet and teacher from Milwaukee. His work is published or forthcoming from Best New Poets, Narrative, Ninth Letter, Blackbird, The Southern Review, Seventh Wave, The Los Angeles Review, West Branch, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine and was the winner of the program’s 2022 Excellence in Poetry Prize. He lives in LA.
Finalists for the award were: A Brief History of the Midwest by Andrew Grace, Common Disaster by M. Cynthia Cheung, ÉTUDE ON THE WHITE PIANO by LaWanda Walters, Fluent in Blue by Erin Murphy, Karaoke at the End of the World by Genevieve DeGuzman, MIRROR WOULD BE A BEAUTIFUL NAME FOR A CHILD by Tyler Raso, More Tenderer by Cate Lycurgus, Mrs. God by Lily Greenberg, No Rhododendron by Samyak Shertok, Only art by Annie Kim, peregrine, a hiding by Aaron Lopatin, Someday All the Bones Will Be Gathered Into a Body by Corey Zeller, Square Lake by Jen McClanaghan, The Only Love We Know by Maria Nazos, and What We Did to Her Made the Water Rise by Meghann Plunkett.
Thank you to everyone who submitted their manuscript to this year’s award and to our editorial board members Sumita Chakraborty, Stacy Gnall, Laura Kasischke, David Kirby, Lucia LoTempio, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, Cynthia Manick, Matthew Nienow, Jacques J. Rancourt, Kristin Robertson, Carey Salerno, and Lisa Sewell. We’re grateful for the interest in and support of Alice James Books.
