Barry Spacks Poetry Prize

The Barry Spacks Poetry Prize honors Santa Barbara’s first Poet Laureate, our beloved friend and teacher, Barry Spacks. The Spacks Prize is awarded annually for a full-length collection of poetry. The prize includes $1000, publication by Gunpowder Press, and 20 author copies of the published book. The editors of Gunpowder Press will select finalists from manuscripts submitted between January 1 and April 30 via Submittable.

We apologize that we are not able to consider international entries. 

Announcing winners of the 2024 Spacks Prize: Keith Ekiss and Holly Karapetkova

After much consideration, the editors of Gunpowder Press selected two manuscripts for publication. The co-winners of the 2024 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize, Burial Fragments by Keith Ekiss and Dear Empire by Holly Karapetkova, represent two very different approaches to contemporary poetry, but both showcase powerhouse poems and unforgettable poetic voices.

In Burial Fragments, Keith Ekiss, a Lecturer and former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, takes readers on a vivid and startling tour of San Francisco, one that “makes itself known / corner by corner.” This is not the City of cable cars and the Golden Gate Bridge, but a place where the gutters are “laid from headstones” and “Street teens repeat the standard line: Spare change for bud?” Not since Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems and Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems has an urban environment received such an insightful and detailed investigation in a book of poetry.

Holly Karapetkova’s Dear Empire offers an unflinching look at the Empire in which we all dwell. A Poet Laureate Emerita of Arlington, Virginia, Karapetkova, writes with a passionate, urgent voice, compelled to call out injustice wherever she sees it. In poems like “Dear White Girl” and “Snow White” Karapetkova lays open and eviscerates white privilege and the whitewashing of history. In “Even the Space,” she writes: “Can I say one word / that isn’t white— // the space / around the words // the silence / behind every door.”

This is the first time in the Spacks Prize’s history that two winners have been awarded, but this year’s judges, Gunpowder’s co-editors David Starkey and Chryss Yost, felt strongly that both manuscripts deserved the honor of publication and a $1000 prize.

Additional finalists selected for recognition are:

• I Took the Gun from My Mother’s Hand by Sara Burge
• Want by Kevin Clark
• Filling the Gourd with Bees by Hollie Dugas
• Miracle Soap by Edison Dupree
• Dying to Reach You by Christina Hauck
• Designated Wilderness by Vincent Hiscock
• A White Horse Is Not a Horse by Angelo Mao
• The Accidental Courage of Our Lives by Victoria Melekian
• Plaint by Sarah Sousa
• Learning to Drown by SM Stubbs

Keith Ekiss is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. He is the author of “Pima Road Notebook” (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2010) and translator of “The Fire’s Journey” (Tavern Books, 2019), an epic poem by the Costa Rican writer Eunice Odio in four volumes. “Territory of Dawn: The Selected Poems of Eunice Odio” was published in Spring, 2016 by The Bitter Oleander Press. He is the past recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Community of Writers’ Conference, Millay Colony for the Arts, Santa Fe Art Institute, and the Petrified Forest National Park.

Holly Karapetkova is Poet Laureate Emerita of Arlington, Virginia, and a recipient of a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship for her work with young poets. Her poetry, prose, and translations have appeared widely in print and online. She is the author of two books of poetry: Towline, winner of the Vern Rutsala Poetry Prize from Cloudbank Books, and Words We Might One Day Say, winner of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House Prize for Poetry. She lives in Arlington, Virginia, and teaches at Marymount University.

2023 Spacks Prize Winner: Kellam Ayres

The 2023 Spacks Prize, selected by Gary Soto, is Kellam Ayres for her manuscript In the Cathedral of My Undoing, released in February 2024 by Gunpowder Press.  Final judge Gary Soto writes,

Is this smalltown America? A place where the air doesn’t move, love is thin, beer fails nightly to do its trick, and hope rides a cloud to the edge of town, then disappears? These poems are located further east than Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, but they offer the same story of lives where the dramas are small, their significance large, the outcome of disappointments seemingly permanent. Here is art, here is truth, poems as portraits.

Kellam Ayres’s poems have appeared in New England Review, Guernica, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. She’s a 2023 Alice James Award finalist and was awarded a 2021-22 Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant. She’s a librarian at Middlebury College, where she specializes in open education and serves as the liaison to the Bread Loaf School of English and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences. She’s a graduate of both the School of English and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and lives with her husband, daughter, and son in rural Vermont. Visit her website here.

The editors recognize and honor the other finalists, with thanks to the many poets who allowed us to consider their manuscripts.
Finalists are listed below (in alphabetical order by poet’s last name):

• The Grief Committee by Sarah Carey
• The Book of Drought by Robert Carney
• The Years Will Undo by Valentina Gnup
• Dear Empire by Holly Karapetkova
• Refloating by Susan Meserve
•  Sober Ghost by Jeffrey Skinner
• Preparing Not to Drown by SM Stubbs 

The editors appreciate having Gary Soto’s selection. Born and raised in Fresno, California, Gary Soto is the author of fourteen poetry collections for adults, most notably New and Selected Poems, a 1995 finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Award and the National Book Award, and Downtime, published by Gunpowder Press in 2023. He has received the Discovery-The Nation Prize and the California Library Association’s John and Patricia Award [twice], in addition to fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts [twice], and the Guggenheim Foundation. For ITVS, he produced the film “The Pool Party,” which received the 1993 Andrew Carnegie Medal. In 1995, for his work with young people, he was selected NBC Person of the Week. In 1999 he was honored with the Human and Civil Rights Award from the American Education Association, the Literature Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, and the PEN Center West Book Award for his young-adult short story collection PETTY CRIMES. For the Los Angeles Opera, he wrote the libretto to the opera “Nerdlandia.” In all, his books have sold five million copies, with eight titles translated into French, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. He lives in Berkeley, California.

2022 Spacks Prize Winner: Catherine Esposito Prescott

The editors of Gunpowder Press are thrilled to announce the winner of the 2022 Spacks Prize, selected by Danusha Laméris, is Accidental Garden by Catherine Esposito Prescott.

Of the winning manuscript, judge Danusha Laméris writes:

I admire these poems for their willingness to encounter; to give us the saw-toothed shark, the microbe, the manatee, and, of course, the moon. Here is a poet who holds, so dearly, all that slips away. “O heart,” begins one address, “crumb-lover, taker of any bid. For as long/ as there’s land to walk along, isthmus,/ channel, bridge to nothing, I’ll move, I’ll play,/ I’ll scrape flint into fire.”

Catherine Esposito Prescott is the author of the chapbooks Maria Sings and The Living Ruin. Her work appears in many journals and anthologies, including EcoTheo Review, Green Mountains Review Online, MER VOX, Mezzo Cammin, NELLE, Northwest Review, Pleiades, Spillway, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and West Trestle Review as well as Grabbed: Poets & Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment, & Healing and The Orison Anthology. Co-founder of SWWIM and Editor in Chief of SWWIM Every Day, Prescott earned an MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry from NYU. She leads writing and yoga retreats and teaches vinyasa yoga and yoga philosophy in Miami, where she lives with her family. Visit her website here.

The other finalists, in alphabetical order by poet’s last name:

• Temporary Shelters by Grant Clauser
• Ordinary Fissures by Sara Eddy
• Blood Music by Emily Hockaday
• Estate Sale by Dan Murphy
• Table with Burning Candle by Julia Paul
• Redress by Jessica Smith
• In Her Black Boundaries by Sarah Sousa
• Apocalyptych by SM Stubbs

The editors are grateful to final judge Danusha Laméris for dedication to the poetry community. She is the author of The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), which was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her poems have been published in: The Best American Poetry,The New York Times,TheAmerican Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The SUN Magazine, Tin House, The Gettysburg Review, and Ploughshares. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and winner of a 2021 Northern California Book Award. The 2020 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, she teaches poetry independently, and is a Poet Laureate emeritus of Santa Cruz County, California. She is currently on the faculty of Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program.

2021 Spacks Prize Winner: Todd Copeland

Like All Light by Todd Copeland was selected by Lynne Thompson as winner of the 2021 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize.

Todd Copeland’s other works include the poetry chapbook The Book as Knife (Ravenna Press, 2021) and the narrative nonfiction book The Immortal Ten (Baylor University Press, 2006). His poems have appeared in The Journal, Southern Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Lake Effect, Christianity & Literature, and Sugar House Review, among other publications, and his essays have been published in such journals as Literary Imagination, JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory, and Media, War & Conflict. He holds degrees in English from Baylor University (BA), The University of Georgia (MA), and Texas A&M University (PhD). A native of Ohio, he lives in Waco, Texas.

Of this collection, Lynne Thompson writes:

From the opening lines of Like All Light and throughout the collection, Todd Copeland wraps these poems in elegiac language both lyrical and haunting. His flood of memories—real and imagined—will remain with the reader long after the reading is done. Take your time; it’s well worth the journey.

The other finalists, in alphabetical order by poet’s last name:

• These Waters by John Belk
• Design by Theresa Burns
• Gatherer’s Alphabet by Susan Kelly-Dewitt
• Three Hundred Streets of Venice California by Tom Laichas
• Aisle 228 by Sandra Marchetti
• Before the Forest Burns by Leslie Monsour
• Easy Victims to the Charitable Deceptions of Nostalgia by Emily Schulten
• Feast of Light by Emily Tuszynka
• A Primer of Interference by Suzanne Wise

Judge Lynne Thompson is the Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles and the author of Beg No Pardon, Start With A Small Guitar, and Fretwork selected by Jane Hirshfield for the Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize. Thompson’s recent work appears or is forthcoming in Rust & Moth, Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, and 2020 Best American Poetry, among others. Thompson is Chair of the Board of Trustees at Scripps College and serves on the Boards of Cave Canem and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

2020 Spacks Prize Winner: Meghan Dunn

Curriculum by Meghan Dunn was selected by Jessica Jacobs as the winner of the 2020 Spacks Prize.

Of the winning manuscript, Jessica Jacobs writes:

In Meghan Dunn’s incisive debut, we encounter a speaker both student and teacher. These poems delve into the moments that forged her, while offering timely accounts of trying to shepherd students through America’s dark racial history, bearing witness to modern-day lynchings, active shooter drills, and the shock of classmates dead far too soon. Beautifully crafted, every lesson bears surprises: “Cartography” is a study in the landscape of bodies and drift of borders; “Foreign Language,” in the difficulty of holding another’s grief; “Grammar Lesson,” in the moments that reveal us as less than the person we’d most like to be. In Curriculum, all of life, with its many loves and losses, is on the syllabus, and like the best classes, these poems reintroduce us to wonder, making us students again of a world we thought we already knew.

About the winner: Meghan Dunn lives in Brooklyn, NY, where she teaches high school English. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, Four Way Review, and Southern Humanities Review, among others. She is a four-time recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and a 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her website is http://meghandunnpoet.com/

Mother Lode, by Peg Quinn, will also be published as an Editor’s Choice.

The other finalists, in alphabetical order by poet’s last name:

• Luminous Body, Glittering, Ash by C.W. Emerson
• Ishmael Mask, by Charles Kell
• The Right Blue Dream Home, by Claire McQuerry
• To Find Comfort in Others, by Stephen Priest
• From the Gunroom by Keith Stahl
• Divination with a Human Heart Attached by Emily Stoddard
• The Public by Patrick Swaney
• Sum Ledger by Adam Tavel (forthcoming from Measure Press—congratulations, Adam!)

Judge 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 Book Award in Poetry, was an Over the Rainbow selection by the American Library Association, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary and Julie Suk Awards. Her chapbook In Whatever Light Left to Us was published by Sibling Rivalry Press. She holds an M.F.A. from Purdue University, where she served as the Editor-in-Chief of Sycamore Review, and a B.A. from Smith College. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in publications including Orion, New England Review, Crazyhorse,  and Guernica. An avid long-distance runner, Jessica has worked as a rock climbing instructor, bartender, and professor—leading workshops around the country and teaching for Hendrix College, UNC-Wilmington’s MFA program, and Writing Workshops in Greece, among other programs—and is now the Chapbook Editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown, and is at work on parallel collections of essays and poems exploring spirituality, Torah, and Midrash.

2019 Spacks Prize Winner: Glenn Freeman

Drinking with O’Hara by Glenn Freeman was selected by Stephen Dunn as the winner of the 2019 Spacks Prize.

The other finalists, in alphabetical order by poet’s last name:

• These Waters, John Belk
• Rosetta, by Karina Borowicz
• Luminous Body, Glittering Ash, by C.W. Emerson
• The Invention of the Parachute, by Ken Fifer
• Into Night’s Tent, by Stephen Frech
• I Come from a Long Line of Men Who Die in Their Sleep, by Robin Gow
• Our Spilt Blood at the Borders, by Jonathan Greenhause
• Medicine, 3AM, by Susan Kelly-Dewitt
• Cautious Horses Eyed Us, by Peg Quinn

The editors of Gunpowder Press were impressed by the precise language and striking images in these manuscripts. We also appreciate Stephen Dunn’s critical eye on selecting a winner from this strong group of manuscripts.

Dunn is the author of over a dozen books of poetry, including the National Poetry Series Prize-winning Local Time (1986), Landscape at the End of the Century (1991), Loosestrife (1996), Different Hours (2000), which won the Pulitzer Prize, What Goes On: New and Selected Poems 1995-2009 (2009), Here and Now (2011), Lines of Defense (2014), and Keeper of Limits (2015). His works of prose include Riffs and Reciprocities: Prose Pairs (1998), and Walking Light: Essays and Memoirs (reissued 2001). In addition to the Pulitzer, Dunn’s honors and awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He won the James Wright Prize and an Academy Award for Literature. Dunn is distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Richard Stockton College.

2018 Spacks Prize Winner: Michelle Bonczek Evory

The Ghosts of Lost Animals by Michelle Bonczek Evory was selected by Lee Herrick as the winner of the 2018 Spacks Prize.

The other finalists, in alphabetical order by poet’s last name:

• Steve Bellin-Oka, Ash Sonata
• Nina Clements, Our Mother of Sorrows
• Amy Davis, Wayward
• Kathy Goodkin, Crybaby Bridge
• Andrew Gottlieb, Tales of Distance
• Emily Hazel, The Brave Betweens
• Kip Knott, Temporary Agnostic
• Jonathan Weinert, Indifferent Country
• Reed Wilson, Orpheum

Lee Herrick is the author of Gardening Secrets of the Dead and This Many Miles from Desire, and a third book, Scar and Flower, is forthcoming from Word Poetry Press in 2019. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, anthologies, and college textbooks, including The Bloomsbury Review, Columbia Poetry Review, The Normal School, Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice, and Visions Across the Americas, 8th edition, among others. He is a Fresno Poet Laureate Emeritus and serves on the advisory board of The Adoption Museum Project. Born in Daejeon, South Korea and adopted at ten months, he teaches at Fresno City College and in the MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College.

2017 Spacks Prize Winner: Aaron Baker

Posthumous Noon by Aaron Baker was selected by Jane Hirshfield as the winner of the 2017 Spacks Prize.

The other finalists, in alphabetical order by poet’s last name:

• Steven Huff, A Fire in the Hill
• Barbara March, Here Is a Woman
• Jeff Oaks, Little What
• Lisa Rosenberg, A Different Physics
• Lynn Schmeldler, History of Gone
• Emily Schulten, The Way a Wound Becomes a Scar
• Melissa Stephenson, After Mating for Life
• Angela Voras-Hills, The Account of Worms
• Pui Ying Wong, The Feast

Jane Hirshfield’s most recent, eighth book of poetry is The Beauty (Knopf, 2015),  long listed for the National Book Award and named a best book of the year by The San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Independent Review of Books. Her newest book of essays, Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (Knopf, 2015), received the Northern California Book Award. Previous honors include The Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, the Donald Hall-Jane Kenyon Prize in American Poetry, Columbia University’s Translation Center Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Arts. While never a full time academic, Hirshfield has taught or been a poet in residence at U.C. Berkeley, the University of Virginia, the Bennington MFA Writing Seminars, U.C. Santa Barbara, and elsewhere. Hirshfield was the 2016 Mohr Visiting Poet at Stanford University. In 2012 she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

2016 Spacks Prize Winner: Kurt Olsson

Burning Down Disneyland by Kurt Olsson was selected by Thomas Lux as the winner of the 2016 Spacks Prize.

The other finalists, in alphabetical order by poet’s last name:

• Nan Cohen, Unfinished City
• Jeff Ewing, The Wind Apples
• Andrew Gottlieb, His Winter Beast
• Adam Houle, Stray
• Kathleen McClung, The Typists Play Monopoly
• Emily Schulten, The Way a Wound Becomes a Scar
• Anna Scotti, Bewildered by All This Broken Sky
• James Scruton, Ordinary Plenty
• Erin Elizabeth Smith, Down: The Alice Poems

2015 Spacks Prize Winner: Catherine Abbey Hodges

The inaugural Spacks Prize was awarded by Dan Gerber to poet Catherine Abbey Hodges for her book Instead of Sadness. She has since published two additional books with Gunpowder Press: Empty Me Full (2024) and Raft of Days (2017)

The other finalists, in alphabetical order by poet’s last name:

• Susan Kelly-Dewitt, Bird Singing in the Moonlight
• Christine Kitano, Sky Country
• John Morrison, Monkey Island
• Barbara Presnell, Blue Star
• Lindsay Tigue, System of Ghosts
• Carine Topal, Some World
• Lillo Way, Wingbone