torrin a. greathouse Wins the 2020 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry

Milkweed Editions is pleased to announce that torrin a. greathouse has won the 2020 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. For her poetry collection Wound from the Mouth of a Wound, selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, greathouse will receive $10,000 and publication by Milkweed Editions this December.

torrin a. greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk and MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of boy/girl/ghost (TAR Chapbook Series, 2018) and assistant editor of The Shallow Ends. In 2020, they received fellowships from Zoeglossia and the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Her work is published or forthcoming in POETRY, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, & The Kenyon Review.

In her prize judgement for the winning collection, Aimee Nezhukumatathil writes:

”Wound from the Mouth of a Wound is a remarkable excavation, multitasking in the best and most unforgettable ways. This collection attends to both beauty and ’the ugly of my tongue / lolling serpent curled in the slick of my jaw,’—presenting visionary mediations and diagramming maps across the galaxy of a body, all while serving others as a guide or oracle. In these pages, the fragments and fusion of public and private desires dig into exhilarating terrain I didn’t quite realize I had been thirsty for all along. The everlasting and intimate result of this book feels like we’re holding a small thunderstorm in our hands.”

We look forward to publishing Wound from the Mouth of a Wound later this year. Please join us in congratulating torrin!