The Ashland Poetry Press is thrilled to announce that judge Matthew Rohrer has selected Valerie Perreault’s Neon Pastoral as the winner of the 2024 Richard Snyder Memorial Poetry Prize.
We received nearly 500 entries this year, and every manuscript was read with care, with excitement, and with genuine gratitude. This decision was immensely difficult at every stage, and we feel humbled by the work we read this spring and summer. The state of poetry in America is strong – devastatingly, complexly, and thrillingly. We’re grateful to inhabit our corner of the community.
To all who submitted: a huge thank you. You made our spring and summer extraordinarily difficult in the best possible way. So many of these manuscripts will soon be devastating books, and we’ll buy them with gratitude. Keep the faith.
We’d like to recognize our finalist and semi-finalist submissions as well.
2024 Richard Snyder Memorial Book Prize Finalists included (listed alphabetically by author):
Finalists:
Talia Bloch, How We Keep Each Other Company
Benjamin Grossberg, When You Read a Novel the Dead Would Like
Emily Hyland, Family Disease
K.T. Landon, For as Long as We Can
Doug Ramspeck, Air After a Fire
Brian Trimboli, The Brothers, Perdendo and Perdendosi
Caroline Wellman, Ghost Apples
Kirk Wilson, Travel
Mariano Zaro, The Weight of Sound
Semi-Finalists:
Clare Banks, Notes on Endings
Nicelle Davis, How Does Your Garden Grow?
Adam Day, Midnight’s Talking Lion and the Wedding Fire
Rey Fairburn, The Downfall of Domestic Dreams
Jean Gallagher, Rivermouth Shouting
Beth Gilstrap, There is News Along the Ohio River
Danielle Hanson, The Clouds have Arrived in their Armor
Jen Karetnick, Domestic Outlaw
Kent Leatham, The Ghost of Slumber Mountain
Clif Mason, Super Flower Blood Moon
Matt McBride, At the Mercy of the Flies
Michael McKee Green, Bios
Scarlett Peterson, Notes from the Field
John Pijewski, Bruised Light
Samodh Porawagamage, All the Salty Sand in Our Mouths
Xiaoqiu Qiu, Other Side of the Ocean
Joyce Schmid, White Camellias
Anne Shafmaster, Think Not of Worn-Out Songbirds
Judson Simmons, To Slaughter Sheep on the Altar of My Eyelids
John Spaulding, Midnight Snow
Lee Stockdale, The Diligent Work of the Dead
Kathleen Wakefield, Summoning
Jonathan Weinert, The New England Book of Dying and Living
Heather Hallberg Yanda, What the Stones Borrowed
Lisa Zimmerman, The Heart’s Long Work