Ruth Stone First Book Prize Winner

In brings us great pleasure to announce that Rachel B. Glaser has selected Hajara Quinn's Coolth as the winner of the Ruth Stone First Book Prize. Of Coolth, Glaser said:

"A boy in a pool in CA/says Marco and a boy in a pool/in NJ says Polo". Hajara Quinn's debut boldly paints our world with new phrases and ways of seeing. One poem speaks of "a battalion of clouds/dry humping into the distance" and another says "I named my jade plant Boom Town/and watched it booming/in its fit of sun." Coolth reveals a new kind of transcendentalism: a pool party of cartoons and realities. These poems are built with inherent humanity and love. As Quinn says, "Turn to your neighbor, / and smell their hot jazz."

Coolth will be published in Fall 2017.

About Hajara

Hajara Quinn is the author of the chapbook Unnaysayer (Flying Object 2013). Her poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast, The Volta and Sixth Finch. She is a recipient of a 2015 Oregon Literary Fellowship, and currently lives in Portland, OR.

Finalists

  • A Small Rising Up In The Lungs, Kit Frick
  • The Rose Engine, Cindy King
  • Orogeny, Irene Mathieu (forthcoming from Trembling Pillow Press)
  • Southern Daughters, Liz McGehee
  • It Hurts When You Spread Me So Thin, JoAnna Novak
  • Each Tree Could Hold a Gallows Or a House, Nina Puro
  • Just Look At All These Poems, Maribeth Theroux
  • FIDELITORIA: fixed or fluxed, Candice Wuehle

Notable Manuscripts Accepted Elsewhere

Mark Cugini