Academy of American Poets has recognized as a Poet Laureate Fellow Emma Trelles, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Fellow! Emma is the series editor for Gunpowder’s Alta California Chapbook Prize. Gunpowder is committed to bringing the words of Latinx poets to as wide an audience as possible. Thank you to the Academy of American Poets for […]
Congratulations to Kundai Chikowero, Santa Barbara’s first Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador
Gunpowder Press welcomes our community’s first Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador, Kundai Chikowero! We are honored to present one of her poems here. The moon and her waves We are like the moon and the wavesA pull felt from millions awayRegardless left untouched Sustaining life around usThen devastating in wavestsunamisAnd bouts of anger An existence frighteningly […]
Carol Decanio Abeles Emerging Poets Prize winners announced
Congratulations to winner Carol Ann Wilburn, and runners-up Susan Chiavelli, and Dairine Pearson! Read the selected poems here.
Carol Decanio Abeles Young Poets Prize winners
Congratulations, young poets! Read the winning poems submitted by participants in Santa Barbara County’s California Poets in the Schools program.
Announcing the Carol DeCanio Abeles Emerging Poets Prize
The Carol DeCanio Abeles Emerging Poets Prize offers 3 prizes, up to $500, for an original poem! Open to Santa Barbara County poets (age 18 or older) who have not yet published a full-length collection of poems. Send up to 3 poems per entry by March 15, 2022. Learn more here.
Todd Copeland selected for 2021 Spacks Prize
The editors of Gunpowder Press are thrilled to announce that Todd Copeland’s Like All Light was selected by Lynne Thompson as winner of the 2021 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize.
First Latinx Chapbook Contest
Gunpowder Press invites Latinx poets who are current residents of California (age 18+) to submit to the first Gunpowder Latinx Poetry Chapbook contest. Poems may be submitted in English or Spanish. Selected manuscripts will be published in both English and Spanish. We especially encourage poets living on the Central Coast in Santa Barbara, Ventura, or San Luis Obispo counties […]
Alta California Chapbook Winners
Crystal AC Salas, author of Grief Logic, and Nicholas Reiner, author of Levitations will be featured readers for the Mission Poetry Series. Books are available now!
Curriculum
The 2020 Spacks Prize winning book, Curriculum by Meghan Dunn, is now available from Gunpowder Press. Congratulations, Meghan!
Peg Quinn Reading
Peg Quinn will be reading from her book Mother Lode on Sunday, February 21, at 3:00pm PST via Zoom. ZOOM LINK: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87928325934
Honoring David Case
In 2014, David Starkey founded Gunpowder Press with two immediate goals in mind. He wanted to publish the first books of Chryss Yost, who would later become Gunpowder’s Co-editor, and his late friend David Case. Wednesday, February 3, 2021, is the tenth anniversary of David’s death, and we mark his passing by lowering the price of his only book of poems, the timeless The Tarnation of Faust.
2020 Spacks Prize Winner: Meghan Dunn
Final Judge Jessica Jacobs has selected Curriculum, by Meghan Dunn of Brooklyn, New York, as the winner of the 2020 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize. The editors of Gunpowder Press are excited to publish this collection of timely and carefully-crafted poems. Read the judge’s response:
Jessica Jacobs to judge 2020 Spacks Prize
Gunpowder Press is honored to announce that Jessica Jacobs has agreed to be the final judge for the 2020 Spacks Prize. Jessica Jacobs is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going, published by Four Way Books, was named one of Library Journal‘s Best Poetry Books of 2019. Her debut collection, Pelvis with Distance, won the New Mexico […]
2020 Spacks Prize open now!
We are excited to announce that Glenn Freeman’s book, Drinking with O’Hara, winner of the 2019 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize, is forthcoming soon from Gunpowder Press. The 2020 Spacks Prize will be accepting submissions from January 1 through April 30, 2020.
Call for Poems: Edson Smith Collection
Gunpowder Press invites poets from Santa Barbara or adjacent counties to submit 1-3 poems inspired by photographs in the historic Edson Smith Photograph collection for a Shoreline Voices Anthology. As described on the collection’s webpage: The Edson Smith Photograph collection contains nearly 1,500 early images of Santa Barbara County dating from the 1870s-1940s, many of […]
2018 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize Winner Announced
Gunpowder Press is thrilled to announce that Michelle Bonczek Evory is the winner of the fourth annual Barry Spacks Poetry Prize for her book, The Ghosts of Lost Animals. Final judge Lee Herrick says of this book: Michelle Bonczek Evory’s The Ghosts of Lost Animals is full of risk, reward, gravity, invention, and surprise. There is a hunger […]
What Breathes Us: 3 Santa Barbara Poets Laureate to tour Ireland
Gunpowder Press is the media sponsor for an upcoming trip inspired by a visit to Dick Mack’s Pub in Dingle (Santa Barbara’s sister city in Ireland) by former mayor Helene Schneider. Organized by publisher David Starkey, the resulting tour will include seven stops in Ireland and North Ireland. Read more and the full itinerary here.
Gunpowder Press announces six Pushcart Prize nominations
Gunpowder Press proudly nominated six poems for Pushcart Prizes this year. These represent four different Gunpowder Press books published in 2017. Thank you to all the poets who create such extraordinary work! The six selected are: Laure-Anne Bosselaar’s “From Her Favorite Bench in Ménérbes, Provence, Dora Maar, Aged 87, Feeds & Talks to the Pigeons […]
New Shoreline Voices Project anthology for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art
To Give Life a Shape: Poems Inspired by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art is the third Shoreline Voices Project anthology published by Gunpowder Press. Edited by David Starkey and Chryss Yost, To Give Life a Shape will ship early October 2017. SBMA Educational Director (and lifelong friend of poetry) Patsy Hicks says We hope this […]
2017 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize winner announced
Gunpowder Press is excited to announce that judge Jane Hirshfield has selected Aaron Baker’s Posthumous Noon as the winner of the 2017 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize. The editors are grateful to Jane Hirshfield for being our final judge and for her constant outspoken advocacy of poetry and its power. There were 195 manuscripts submitted for […]
New Shoreline Voices Project: Celebrating the Santa Barbara Museum of Art
As part of the Shoreline Voices Project, Gunpowder Press invites poets from Santa Barbara or adjacent counties (Ventura, San Luis Obispo, or Kern) to send up to 3 poems inspired by works in the permanent collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art for consideration for an anthology of poems to be published this fall. […]
San Francisco Chronicle features Nan Cohen
In his “State Lines: California Poetry” column, David Roderick says “Nan Cohen [Unfinished City] has a cinematographer’s talent for framing an image.” We agree. Read more here.
Catherine Abbey Hodges on Writer’s Almanac
2015 Spacks Prize winner Catherine Abbey Hodges has had a SECOND poem from Instead of Sadness read by Garrison Keillor on Writer’s Almanac. Listen to “Dark and Late” here. Listen to “January Song,” from the January 21, 2016 Writer’s Almanac here. Both poem are from Instead of Sadness, the 2015 Barry Spacks Prize winner. Catherine’s […]
Fold your own Gunpowder Poetry Sampler
April 27, 2017, is national Poem in Your Pocket Day. Why have one poem in your pocket when you could have six poems in your pocket? Our first “fold your own” poetry sampler includes poems by Barry Spacks, David Case, Nan Cohen, Kurt Olsson, Catherine Abbey Hodges, and Jim Peterson. Print, fold, and share! NOTE: […]
Jim Peterson’s “Second Sight” receives Special Mention for Poetry in 2017 Pushcart Prize anthology
Congratulations to Jim Peterson! His poem “Second Sight” (below) was selected for Special Mention in Poetry in the 2016 Pushcart Prize anthology. “Second Sight” is included in Original Face (Gunpowder Press, 2015) and originally appeared in The Greensboro Review. Second Sight Into this walking I retired a year ago. A fist of cumulus gathers up […]
2016 Spacks Prize Announcement
Kurt Olsson’s book Burning Down Disneyland was selected by final judge Thomas Lux as the winner of the 2016 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize. Of this work, Thomas Lux said I love the title of this book (though I read it as metaphor!) and I love the innovative mischief of its poems. Let it be known: […]
Gunpowder Interview Extravaganza!
Thank you, to Lisa Osborn, for her terrific interview with GP publisher and co-editor David Starkey and co-editor Chryss Yost, with readings from Rare Feathers poets Susan Chiavelli, George Yatchisin, Sojourner Kincaid Rolle, Gabriella Klein, Mary Brown, Christine Penko, Emma Trelles, Enid Osborn, and Melinda Palacio. Hear it here. We’re very honored to be profiled […]
Barry Spacks on Writer’s Almanac
We’re so excited to have the first poem from a Gunpowder Press book featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. Mr. Keillor selected a poem from Barry Spacks’ Shaping Water on Monday, October 12, 2015. Thank you, Mr. Keillor! Barry, we miss you.
Interview with Gabriella Klein
Publisher David Starkey interviews Gabriella Klein about her debut book, Land Sparing (Nightboat Books), in the Santa Barbara Independent.
Shoreline Voices Project
Through the Shoreline Voices Project, Gunpowder Press publishes theme collections by Santa Barbara and area poets. The first book in the series, Buzz: Poet Respond to SWARM, is a collaborative effort of Gunpowder, Ganna Walska Lotusland, and the poets.
