Milkweed Editions is pleased to announce that the Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, the largest regional poetry prize in the country, will continue under a new name, the Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. The prize will also offer expanded eligibility, adding Michigan to the list of eligible states of residence for entrants in the upper Midwest. The 2019 judge will be acclaimed poet, essayist, and literary translator, Khaled Mattawa.
Blog Posts tagged with "Poetry"
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News / Awards & Prizes
Awards & Prizes
For his manuscript The Milk Hours, chosen by acclaimed poet and judge Henri Cole, James will receive $10,000 and publication by Milkweed Editions in June 2019.
Authors
Max Ritvo began as my student. I met Max when he was a senior at Yale. This is how he began his application to get into my playwriting workshop: Dear Professor Ruhl, Thanks for reading this application. My name is Max Ritvo—I’m a senior English major in the Creative Writing Concentration. All I want to do is write. His application said that he was a poet and a comedian, part of an experimental comedy troupe. A poet and he’s funny? Huh. I reread his application, which had been left to stew in the “no” pile because he’d never written a play before. And because funny poets are a rare and wonderful species of human being, I moved Max to the “yes” pile, despite his lack of experience writing plays. It is hard to imagine now that Max’s application could ever have remained in any other pile—a strange parallel universe in which I never met Max.
Authors
Max Ritvo was a prodigiously gifted poet; toward the end of his life, he was also volcanically productive. Nothing he wrote was without flashes of brilliance, but many of these late poems would surely have been revised or jettisoned; it was slow work to sift out the very best. This he asked me to do—it seemed to me an essential labor lest the weaker poems dilute the stronger. What follows, obviously, reflects my judgment. Nothing has been revised; Elizabeth Metzger, Max’s designated literary executor, suggested one minute cut. Cancer was Max’s tragedy; it was also, as he was canny enough to see, his opportunity. Poets who die at twenty-five do not commonly leave bodies of work so urgent, so daring, so supple, so desperately alive.
Authors / Watch & Listen
From the author of Bright Dead Things comes The Carrying, her most powerful collection yet. And now, for the first time, we’re thrilled to share Limón's entire collection in audiobook. Listen to a preview here.
Authors / Awards & Prizes
Rick Barot, judge of the seventh annual Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, has selected Twin Cities resident Claire Wahmanholm to be recipient of the 2018 prize, for her manuscript, Wilder. Wahmanholm will receive $10,000 as well as publication by Milkweed Editions in November 2018.
Authors / Watch & Listen
North American Stadiums by Grady Chambers is the inaugural winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, and will be published in June 2018. “This book is in many ways a love letter: to the landscapes of the Midwest and Central New York that I have spent so much time in, to the histories of those places, to the people that I have moved through those places with. . .” —Grady Chambers
Authors / News
Less than two years ago, Max Ritvo came into the Milkweed family like a ball of fire. We’re thrilled to share with you his next two books: Letters from Max, a book of correspondence between Max and the playwright Sarah Ruhl; and The Final Voicemails, a second collection of poems edited by Louise Glück.
Authors / Awards & Prizes
Milkweed Editions, in partnership with Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka and the Alan B. Slifka Foundation, is pleased to announce that Grady Chambers is the winner of the inaugural Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. For his manuscript, North American Stadiums, chosen by acclaimed poet and judge Henri Cole, Chambers will receive $10,000 and publication by Milkweed Editions in June 2018.
Authors / News
We are thrilled to share that Parneshia Jones—author of the collection of poems Vessel, published in 2015 by Milkweed Editions—has been appointed the next president of Cave Canem's board of directors. Cave Canem was founded by Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady in 1996 to remedy the under-representation and isolation of African American poets in the literary landscape. The nonprofit's extensive programming and publications have greatly impacted the American literary landscape, and include three book prizes delivered in partnership with five prestigious presses, fellowships, community-based workshops for emerging and established poets, and a vast range of events, seminars, and lectures.