Gunpowder Press, Letras Latinas, and series editor Emma Trelles are pleased to announce the winner of the Alta California Chapbook Prize: Carlos Andrés Gómez for Patrilineation, which will be published by Gunpowder Press in a bilingual edition later this year. Final judge Raina León writes:
From the first poem in Patrilineation, the stakes are high. The author invites us into an early memory, rooted in a tender and fragile part of the body, through a lens of loss: the eyelashes of a child. In these poems, we confront a truth: we live and breathe and move always vulnerable, always at the edge of or in the process of losing. How do we name our lineages, what we have inherited, and transmute the strength that comes from pain into a strength that, itself, multiples the transformational possibilities of love to others and the self? How do we name the political hypocrisies—all men are created equal—while knowing the threats all around you and holding your child, in all his beauty, in your arms? These poems engage questions, guide us into reflection, and agitate us towards action, change, and love.
—Raina León
Carlos Andrés Gómez is a Colombian American poet from New York City. His poetry collection Fractures (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020) was selected by Pulitzer Prize winner and 19th U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey as the winner of the 2020 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Winner of the Foreword INDIES Gold Medal and the International Book Award, Gómez has been published in The Nation, New England Review, Academy of American Poets’Poem-a-Day series, The Yale Review, The Sunday Times, Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World (W. W. Norton, 2022), and elsewhere. Carlos is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. For more: CarlosLive.com
Honorable Mentions & Finalists:
The judges named two manuscripts for Honorable Mention:
- Nimalah Baaith-Ducharme, Of Rootwork (Honorable Mention)
- Tony Medina, In the Arms of Smoke (Honorable Mention)
And the following as Finalists:
- Julián Bañuelos, A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.S.
- José Chapa, Sobre los puentes del habla
- Esperanza Cintrón, Big Hooped Earrings
- Lupita Eyde-Tucker, Cryptoscape
- Gaby Garcia, Durazno
- Marcy Rae Henry, to Mictlantecuhtli’s house we go
- Roberto Efren Osorio, Hurt is a Land We Tend
- sami h tripp, Sister Cities
- Jimmy Vega, future shock
Gunpowder Press is grateful to Emma Trelles, founding editor of the Alta California Chapbook Series; series translator Alexandra Lytton Regalado; Francisco Aragón, director of Letras Latinas, and his team: Laura Villareal, Brent Ameneyro, and Cloud Cardona. Their dedication makes this all possible. Thank you to all the poets that allow us to consider your work and who support independent poetry.
Congratulations, Carlos!
