We are pleased to announce Louder Birds by Angela Voras-Hills was selected by Traci Brimhall as the winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry and will be published next year. Traci Brimhall praised this book, saying, “This collection is astonishing. Lines from these poems kept rising in me days after I read them, and each poem’s turn was always controlled but unexpected. This book made me look at the world with fresh attention.”
We also would like to commend the other finalists and semi-finalists, whose manuscripts in our opinion were all outstanding and publishable.
Finalists: Allison Adair, Ghost Town; Emily Cole, Thunderhead; Katie Condon, Praying Naked; Rachel Edelman, Another Exodus; Jennie Malboeuf, God had a body; Vi Khi Nao, The Figurative Orations of Odd Nerdrum; Emily Perez, Ravel & Fray; Kevin A. Phan, Dears, Beloveds; Saara Myrene Raappana, Chamber After Chamber; Paige Quiñones, The Best Prey
Semifinalists: Dilruba Ahmed, Bring Now the Angels; Daniel Arias-Gómez, Cathedrals; Stacey Balkun, Sweetbitter; Steve Bellin-Oka, Instructions for Seeing a Ghost; Mag Gabbert, Blow; Brooke Matson, In Accelerated Silence; Meghan McClure, Brother / Bruise; Laura Minor, Flowers as Mind Control; Leah Naomi Green, The More Extravagant Feast; Ginger Ko, Biography of My Automaton; Donald Platt, Cloud Hands, Earth Hands; Todd Smith, The Weather Gods; Sean Shearer, Red Lemons
Angela Voras-Hills lives with her family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Best New Poets, Memorious, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and New Ohio Review, among others. She has received grants from The Sustainable Arts Foundation, Key West Literary Seminar, as well as a fellowship from Writers’ Room of Boston.