Michael Kleber-Diggs Wins 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize
We are thrilled to announce that Michael Kleber-Diggs is the winner of the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. His manuscript Worldly Things was selected by judge Henri Cole and will be published in June 2021. In addition to publication, Kleber-Diggs will receive $10,000.
Michael Kleber-Diggs was born and raised in Kansas and now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. His work has appeared in Lit Hub, the Rumpus, Rain Taxi, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Water~Stone Review, Midway Review, North Dakota Quarterly and a few anthologies. Kleber-Diggs teaches poetry and creative non-fiction through the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop. Worldly Things is his debut collection of poems.
Cole describes Wordly Things as follows:
“Michael Kleber-Diggs’s poems quietly put pressure on us to live up to our nation’s ideals. He gives voice to the experiences and aspirations of middle-class Black America, and though the promised land is faraway, he finds grace in the natural world, long marriage, and fathering. These supple, socially responsible poems seem to me a triumphant, paradoxical, luminous response to a violent time in our history.”
Thank you to the Alan B. Slifka Foundation and its president, Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka, for supporting the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize.
MAX RITVO’S LEGACY
“All poets are heroes. Your book is your hero story. Take your reader on an adventure.”
—Max Ritvo
Max came into our life at Milkweed Editions in May 2016 and quickly became our hero. Although he passed away just four months later, our experience publishing Four Reincarnations has underscored what it means to champion writers who are our heroes. We are delighted and deeply honored to celebrate Max’s legacy with this prize, and to continue publishing outstanding emerging poets. Thank you to the Alan B. Slifka Foundation and its president, Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka, for supporting the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize.
Previous Max Ritvo Poetry Prize winners include The Clearing by Allison Adair, The Milk Hours by John James, and North American Stadiums by Grady Chambers.
Learn more the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and our poetry prizes here.
Michael Kleber-Diggs
Michael Kleber-Diggs’s debut collection of poems, Worldly Things, won the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. He was born and raised in Kansas and now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. His work has appeared in Lit Hub, the Rumpus, Rain Taxi, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Water~Stone Review, Midway Review, North Dakota Quarterly and a few anthologies. Michael teaches poetry and creative non-fiction through the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop.
