Constant Laval Williams Wins the Tenth Annual Jake Adam York Prize

ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF THE 2025–26 JAKE ADAM YORK PRIZE!

Copper Nickel and Milkweed Editions are thrilled to announce that judge Patricia Smith has chosen Constant Laval Williams’ book Elegy with Beautiful Child as the winner of the 2025–26 Jake Adam York Prize. Elegy with Beautiful Child will be published by Milkweed Editions in January of 2027, and Williams will receive $2,000.

Constant Laval Williams received the Beau J. Boudreaux Poetry Award at the University of Southern California and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He volunteers as a senior reader for Ploughshares, and his poems appear in The Adroit Journal, Blackbird, Lana Turner, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles.

In choosing Williams’ book, Patricia Smith says: “‘What a joy to have anything at all,’ writes Constant Laval Williams in this raw and utterly sparkling debut, an instruction manual on all the best ways to claw through grit towards whatever shines. What struck me most about Elegy with Beautiful Child is how much we need it. Everywhere we turn waits the lip of an abyss, hundreds of ways to shatter, a numbing news update, a tangling of shadows. Language now lies to us so often, and with such skill. But in these stark, revelatory poems, we’re urged to remember the perseverance of light that’s sometimes muted, but never dims to nothing. Beauty will never abandon us to hurt. Or as the poet says “… a hornet nest is still a kind of cathedral.”

There were 982 manuscripts submitted to the prize this year, which our screeners narrowed to 20 finalists and eight semifinalists. It’s our opinion that every one of these manuscripts is outstanding and eminently publishable.

In addition to naming Williams’ manuscript as the winner, Ms. Smith singled out a runner-up manuscript and two honorable mentions.

The runner up was:

Carrie Johnson, What Survives Is the Work

The honorable mentions were:

Jackie Sabbagh, Love and Transphobia

A. Nicole Sessions, Nine Drops of Turpentine

The other finalists were:

Joshua Boettiger, Six Gestures

Sophia Chong, An Alias of I

Paul Christiansen, River Octopus

Katie Condon, I <3 Dick

Thomas Dooley, not ghost but man

Morgan English, The Field the World

Gabriel Fine, Cartography of Blue

Stephanie Glazier, Of Fish & Country

Siew Hii, Florida Is a Place on Earth

Sarah Maria Medina, To Witness Is to Carry

Lenna Mendoza, As Lightning

Stacy Boe Miller, I Sharpen My Teeth

Jarrett Moseley, Rehumanization Litany

Sam Ross, All Hours

Addie Tsai, Foreign Familiar

Alice White, Between a Dog and a Wolf

And the semi-finalists were:

Imani Christopher, Altar Girl

Sara Femenella, Obedient Daughter

Leah Naomi Green, This Time

Michael Martin, Magnet

Caroline New, The She-Hound Sings

Ugochokwu Okpara, Excarnation

Troy Osaki, Block 13-1-E

Em Setzer, Show Pony

Max Seifert, Men’s Room

Brock Storey, No Night So Dark

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

Nicky Beer, author of Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes

Steven Espada Dawson, author of Late to the Search Party

Ángel García, author of Indifferent Cities

Carolina Hotchandani, author of The Book Eaters

K. Iver, author of Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco

Brionne Janae, author of Because You Were Mine

Michael Kleber-Diggs, author of Worldly Things

Jennifer Loyd, author of Ghost in the Archive

Matthew Tuckner, author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

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.