Sundress Publications is thrilled to announce that Cynthia White‘s chapbook, Glossogenesis, was selected by Athena Nassar as the winner of our annual e-chapbook contest. Cynthia will receive $200 and publication.
Cynthia White is a poet based in Santa Cruz, California. Her poems have appeared in Adroit, Massachusetts Review, ZYZZYVA, Southern Poetry Review, New Letters, Poet Lore and Plume among others. Her work can be found in numerous anthologies, including leaning toward light: Poems for gardens and the hands that tend them from Storey Press. She was a finalist for Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize and the winner of the Julia Darling Memorial Prize from Kallisto Gaia Press. Her poem “She Said Stop Here” was recently included in the preface to “Alma Mater,” a work by London playwright Kendall Feaver. Cynthia is a screener for Red Wheelbarrow’s annual poetry prize.
We are also excited to announce that Jed Myers’ chapbook, Anyone’s Dust, was this year’s Editor’s Choice. Jed will receive $100 as well as publication.
Jed Myers is author of three books of poetry, most recently Learning to Hold (Wandering Aengus Press, 2024), winner of the Wandering Aengus Press Editors’ Award, and previously The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press) and Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award). His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The Poetry Review, RHINO, Poetry Northwest, Southern Indiana Review, The Southeast Review, River Heron Review, and elsewhere.
Our runner-up for this year goes to Abdulrazaq Salihu’s Quantum Entanglements with Notes on Loss., which will also be published as part of our 2025 catalog.
Abdulrazaq Salihu, TPC I, is a Nigerian poet and member of the Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation. He won the SOD Poetry Contest BPKW Poetry Contest, Poetry Archive Poetry Contest, Masks Literary Magazine Poetry Award, Nigerian Prize for Teen Authors (Poetry), Hilltop Creative Writing Award, and others. He has received fellowship and residency from IWE Writers Residency, SPRINg, and elsewhere. He has his works published/forthcoming in Uncanny, Bacopa, Consequence, South Florida Poetry, Eunoia Review, strange horizons, Unstamatic, Bracken, Poetry Quarter(ly), Rogue, B*k, Jupiter Review, black moon magazine, Angime, Grub Street Mag, and elsewhere. He tweets @Arazaqsalihu; Instagram: Abdulrazaq._salihu. He’s the author of Constellations (poetry) and hiccups (Prose).
The entire Sundress team would like to thank Athena Nassar for serving as this year’s judge.
Athena Nassar is an Egyptian-American poet, essayist, and short story writer from Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author of the debut poetry collection Little Houses (Sundress Publications, 2023). Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic, AGNI, Academy of American Poets, The Missouri Review, Southern Humanities Review, Pleiades, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. An Interlochen Arts Academy alum, she is the recipient of the 2019 Scholastic National Gold Medal Portfolio Award, the 2021 San Miguel Writers’ Conference Writing Contest, and the 2021 Academy of American Poets College Prize, among other honors. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Vanderbilt University.
We would also like to thank everyone who sent in their work. Finalists and semi-finalists include:
Finalists:
- Kingpins by Forest Lake Cody
- Fog Machine by Jessica Goodfellow
- ROOT. SPROUT. BLOOM by Kathleen Hellen
- Table for One by Winshen Liu
- Full-Bodied at Best by melissa m.m.
Semi-finalists:
- unapologetically desi by Aishah Ashfer
- Pitching Alabaster by Tshaka Campbell
- thumbprints by Trishita Das
- Wounds of Absence by Thad DeVassie
- object offers up her mouth by Kara Dorris
- Azulejos by Dena Fakhro
- Poems to Stage Dive To by Adam Gianforcaro
- Uncle by Samina Hadi-Tabassum
- Someday I will be an artists by Rue Huang
- touching grass by Mukethe Kawinzi
- Full-Bodied at Best by Melissa Martini-Morales
- What You Exceed by Jessica Lee McMillan
- Pretty Young Things by Emily Perkovich
- Journal Notes on Violences by Henry 7. Reneau, Jr.
- A Study in Red by Timi Sanni
- Mouthful of Prayers, Mouthful of Ash by David Allen Sullivan
- Mirror Myths by Jasmine Tabor
- Our Minor Gods: Love Poems by Para Vadhahong
- water over by Samantha Vargas
