2025 Alice James Award Winner Announced
2025 Alice James Award Winner Announced
We are pleased to announce that the winner of the Alice James Award is New York University graduate Malvika Jolly, for her manuscript, Visiting Hours of the World. Malvika will receive $2,000 and her collection will be published in March 2027. The Editorial Board has chosen one additional manuscript for publication, as Editor’s Choice: The Body Losing Its Borders by zakia henderson-brown from Brooklyn, New York. henderson-brown’s collection will be published in January 2027 and she will receive $1,000.
Malvika Jolly is the author of Visiting Hours of the World, forthcoming from Alice James in Spring 2027. Malvika’s poems have been featured in many literary journals, including: Four Way Review, Mizna, Poetry Northwest, The Rumpus, and The Seventh Wave. She is a graduate of New York University, where she is currently Assistant Managing Editor of Washington Square Review. She runs the Third New World, a poetry reading series inspired by the Non-Aligned Movement.
zakia henderson-brown is a 2023 NYFA/NYSCA poetry fellow, and author of What Kind of Omen Am I- winner of the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. A Cave Canem graduate fellow, she has received additional support from the Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation, Callaloo Journal, The Fine Arts Work Center, and Poets House. Her works appear in New Daughters of Africa (Amistad: 2019), Adroit, Beloit Poetry Journal, Epiphany, North American Review, Obsidian, The Offing, and elsewhere. She lives in her native Brooklyn.
Finalists for the 2025 award were: A Dangerous Man by Steven Kleinman, A Sound Like Rain by Melanie Tafejian, Almost No Noise by Sara Potocsny, Alone After The Feast by Emma De Lisle, b o m b by Lisa Bickmore, Bloodroom by Kay Bancroft, Caregiver’s Report to the Court by Megan Snyder-Camp, Dear— by Cate Lycurgus, ever lost weather by Bevin O’Connor, Every Room With You Inside by Colby Cotton, False Spring by Rebecca Hawkes, Future Grief by Susan Nguyen, Girl Trouble by Diana Whitney, Habits of Adornment by Aumaine Rose Smith, Heartland Errata by Dante Di Stefano, Hell Yeah by Rachelle Toarmino, Hinterman by Colin Criss, Image + Likeness by Olatunde Osinaike, IRRADIANCE by L.A. Johnson, JOAN by Jake Rose, Louisiana Saturday Nights by Megan J. Arlett, Mother labor art by Annie Kim, Opposition Force by Fred Schmalz, Still Sometimes Shipwreck by Anastasios Mihalopoulos, The Laughing Barrel by DeeSoul Carson, The Winding Key by Caitlin Doyle, and Wanted by Wesley Rothman.
Thank you to everyone who submitted their manuscript to this year’s award and to our editorial board members Stacy Gnall, Karan Kapoor, Laura Kasischke, David Kirby, Lucia LoTempio, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, 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.
