Bo Hee Moon Wins the Ninth Annual Jake Adam York Prize
ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF THE 2024–25 JAKE ADAM YORK PRIZE
Milkweed Editions and Copper Nickel are thrilled to announce that judge Matthew Olzmann has chosen Bo Hee Moon’s book Birthstones in the Province of Mercy as the winner of the 2024–25 Jake Adam York Prize. Birthstones in the Province of Mercy will be published by Milkweed Editions in January, 2026, and Moon will receive $2,000.
A South Korean adoptee, Bo Hee Moon is the author of one previous book of poems, Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs, which she published under another name with Tinderbox Editions in 2021. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Poetry, The Margins, swamp pink, and other journals. She is a PhD student in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston, where she has received the Inprint Brown Foundation Fellowship.
In choosing Moon’s book, Olzmann says: “In poems that excavate the complexities and heartache of transnational, cross-cultural adoption, Bo Hee Moon has created a profound work of yearning and mystery. I love these poems for their clarity of vision and lyrical poignancy. And I love this Book for how the individual poems build upon each other and intensify one another, and how, through it all, they reach toward a powerful type of human connection.”
There were 922 manuscripts submitted to the prize this year, which our screeners narrowed to 20 additional finalists and eight semifinalists. It’s our opinion that every one of these manuscripts is outstanding and eminently publishable. With that in mind, the finalists were:
P. Hodges Adams, Not, Not
Adriana Beltrano, Heaven Then Information
Ja’net Danielo, Eclipse
zakia henderson-brown, The Body Losing Its Borders
Marilyn Johnson, Remnant tongue
Michael Juliani, The World Is Not Astonished
Arah Ko, Whatever We Began as We Became Something Else
Marianne Kunkel, Breastplate
Margaree Little, The Gargoyles of Saint-Chapelle
Angelo Mao, A White Horse Is Not a Horse
Neon Mashurov, Esc Dot Zip
Cameron McGill, Virga
Sara Michas-Martin, The Hand Arranging Stars
Carolyn Orosz, Not Long for This World
Michael Pontacoloni, Apartments
Amanda Quaid, No Obvious Distress
Maggie Queeney, The Patient
Jessica Ram, The Ethics of Care
Maya Salameh, If/Water
Frederick Speers, An*i*mus
The semifinalists were:
Holli Carrell, Apostasies
Mario Chard, Baffle Gate
Charlie Clark, The Fortunate World
Thomas Dooley, Made to Carry Your Fires
Lily Greenberg, Death, Yes, Life
Johanna Magin, Against Reason
Nicholas Regiacorte, Cyclorama
Hannah Smith, Common Prairie
And since screeners do essential—if too often unsung—evaluative work narrowing the field of entrants, we think it’s important to note each year who our screeners are (both to say thank you and in the interest of transparency).
This year’s screeners were:
Brian Barker, author of Vanishing Acts
Chelsea B. DesAutels, author of A Dangerous Place
Stephanie Choi, author of The Lengest Neoi
Sarah Green, author of The Deletions
Wayne Miller, author of The End of Childhood
Tyler Mills, author of Hawk Parable
Weijia Pan, author of Motherlands
Iain Haley Pollock, author of All the Possible Bodies
Cintia Santana, author of The Disordered Alphabet
Chris Santiago, author of Small Wars Manual
Finally, we want to mention something briefly about our process: Since a number of entrants had previously published in Copper Nickel, and since other entrants knew one or more of our screeners on a personal level, we were sure to pass the manuscripts among the screeners until no one was tasked with screening work by anyone she had published or with whom she had a personal relationship. We believe strongly in running an ethical contest, and we work hard to ensure that we continue to do so.
Bo Hee Moon
A South Korean adoptee, Bo Hee Moon is the author of one previous book of poems, Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs, which she published under another name with Tinderbox Editions in 2021.
