The Ashland Poetry Press is thrilled to announce that judge Kim Addonizio has selected K.T. Landon’s Abide as the winner of the 2025 Richard Snyder Memorial Poetry Prize. The Ashland Poetry Press staff has also selected Michael Lawson’s Proof as Editor’ Choice.
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.
2025 Richard Snyder Memorial Book Prize Finalists included (listed alphabetically by author):
Finalists:
J. Brooke, Why I Am Not Getting Top Surgery
Fay Dilloff, And the Pool Becomes the Sky
Brandon Lewis, The Mended Animal
John Nieves, Songs for the Failing Light
Liz Robbins, Theme Park
Kelly Rowe, Wind Telephone
Jane Schapiro, Are You There? The Line is Open
Brian Trimboli, The Brothers, Perdendo and Perdendosi
Semi-Finalists:
Cathy Arden, The Lakes Have Been Coming Down from the Mountains for a Long Time
Joshua Boettiger, Five Gestures
Catherine Broadwall, Aftermath
Linda Bryant, Quiet Universe
Kevin Clark, Want
Natasha Deonarain, In Another Life I’d Invite You to Dinner
James Ducat, Debris Orbits
Helene Fisher, What Wasn’t There
Marilyn Johnson, Silent Car
Keith Kopka, Let’s Make a Plan
Megan Leonard, Mercy
Tamara MC, Kroozing/Cruising
Megan McDermott, I Can Be Open or Closed
A Molotkov, Dictionaries
Jefferson Navicky, Fathers & Other Relics
Joseph Radke, You Only Know it the Second Time
Christine Robbins, Hysteria
Jeffrey Talmadge, Schödinger’s Girlfriend
Laura Tanenbaum, Dear Mother
Rebecca Tseng, The Everything Theory of Kissmaking
Barbara Ungar, Waiting for the Ghost
Johnathan Weinert, The New England Book of Dying and Living
Caroline Wellman, Ice Flowers
Kirk Wilson, Travel
Avra Wing, Mammoth Life & Accident