Sundress Publications is excited to announce the results of our 2024 open reading period for full-length poetry manuscripts. The winning selections are: Dani Janae’s Hound Triptych, Abigail Raley’s Wet Specimen, SG Huerta’s Burns, and Kay E. Bancroft’s Bloodroom. Hound Triptych, Wet Specimen, Burns, and Bloodroom are slated for publication in 2026.
Dani Janae (she/her) is a poet and journalist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her work has been published by Longleaf Review, SWWIM, Palette Poetry, Dust Poetry Magazine, and others.
Abigail Raley (she/they) is a poet and library worker from Bowling Green, Kentucky. She is a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee, and she has earned her MFA from the University of Montana. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Offing, Hanging Loose Magazine, HAD, The Stone Circle Review, and elsewhere
SG Huerta (they/them/he/elle) is a queer Xicanx writer and organizer. They are the Poetry Editor of Abode Press, a Roots.Wounds.Words. Fellow, and Tin House alum. SG is the author of two poetry chapbooks and the nonfiction chapbook GOOD GRIEF (fifth wheel press, 2025). Their work has appeared in Honey Literary, The Offing, Infrarrealista Review, and elsewhere. Find them at sghuertawriting.com, or in Tejas with their partner and cats, working towards liberation for oppressed peoples everywhere. They believe Palestine will be free from the river to the sea. They encourage you to find tangible ways to support Palestinian liberation.
Kay E. Bancroft (they/them) is a queer non-binary writer, poet, editor, educator, and artist based in Cincinnati, OH. They hold an MFA in Poetry from Randolph College, and a BA from the University of Cincinnati. You can find their writing in Poet Lore, Pleiades Journal, RHINO Poetry, Passengers Journal, The Rumpus, & more. Explore more at kayebancroftpoet.com.
Congratulations also to this year’s finalists and semifinalists:
Finalists
- Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi, Between Night and Day
- Andrea Carter, Fig Eater
- Seth Copeland, Local News from When We Met
- Todd Dillard, How to Live
- Mckendy Fils-Aime, There’s no door to walk through if the house is destroyed
- Emma Thomas Jones, After Our Mothers Turned Into Coyotes
- Young Fenimore Lee, Timepiece
- Stacy Miller, I Sharpen My Teeth
- Soonest Nathaniel, When Flowers Grow Teeth
- Nicole Santalucia, Lesbian Dinosaurs/Dinosaur Lesbians
- Barbra Schwartz, Psalm for the Nameless
- Jennifer A Sutherland, Alcetis As
- Rebba Pinwei Tseng, I hope we all kiss at the end
- Ruth Williams, Projective Force
- Angelica Whitehorne, Digital R(age)
Semifinalists
- Jenkin Benson, Mundania Moralia
- Audrey Caroll, The bird sings a song of revolution
- Anne Champion, Venom Lesson
- Kimberly Chia, o, live
- Genevieve Creedon, Silence & Salt
- Chiara DiLello, Child of Thirst
- Maia Elgin, Repast
- Jen Gayda Gupta, Everywhere is home if you squint a little
- Lisa Beech Hartz, What Beast
- Eva Heisler, Let us talk about it as though it existed
- DJ Hills, Love poem with dead bodies
- Leslieann Hobayan, Jeepney Girl: An Archipelago
- B. Fulton Jennes, In the Time of Sonic Booms
- Kristin Lafollette, Intern Year
- Eros Livieratos, Futurehaunt
- Erika Luckert, The Vine
- Gabrielle Martin, Blood Sacrifice
- Leslie McIntosh, Within-group variance
- Celina Mcmanus, Saltmouth
- Noriko Nakaba, A good place to start
- Emily Patterson, The birth of undoing
- Bianca Gonzalez Perez, Bloodlines
- Ivy Raff, Water Eye
- Robert Rotham, Kerplunk
- Heidi Seaborn, Pentimento
- Glenn Shaheen, Chrome Pig
- Vivek Sharma, The temple of wood & grass
- Spencer Silverthorne, Heatseeker
- Lisken Van Pelt Dus, A Ghost Between Them
- Michael Vancalbergh, The City of Wire
