Past Winners & Finalists
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The 2016 DISQUIET Literary Prize Winners
DISQUIET International is happy to announce the winners in each genre, including one grand prize winner, for our 2016 Literary Prize, in partnership with Guernica, NinthLetter.com, and The Collagist. A big thank you to all those who entered!
POETRY WINNER: “Do You Speak Virgin? And Other Poems” by Analicia Sotelo (will receive free tuition for the 2016 Disquiet Program as well as publication in The Collagist)
Analicia Sotelo’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, The Antioch Review, Meridian, The Indiana Review, West Branch, Subtropics, and elsewhere. Tracy K. Smith selected “I’m Trying to Write a Poem About a Virgin and It’s Awful” for the Best New Poets 2015 anthology. Analicia holds an MFA from the University of Houston and is the recipient of a fellowship from the Ithaca Image-Text Symposium. She currently lives in Houston, TX.
FINALISTS IN POETRY:
- Genevieve Arlie, “Five Green Poems”
- Rebecca Gismondi, “The Pelican and Other Poems”
- Alex Lemon, sections from “Or Beauty”
- Jenny Molberg, “The Disembodied Woman and Other Poems”
- Caitlin Scarano, “Partings and Other Poems”
NON-FICTION WINNER: “Before You Throw Her Body Down” by LaTanya McQueen (will receive free tuition for the 2016 Disquiet Program, as well as publication on NinthLetter.com)
LaTanya McQueen’s fiction and nonfiction have been published in Black Warrior Review, Fugue, New South, Grist, New Orleans Review, Fourteen Hills, North American Review, Booth, Nimrod, and other journals. She received her MFA from Emerson College and is in the PhD program at the University of Missouri.
FINALISTS IN NON-FICTION:
- Eugene DeSimone, “The Light Shifts”
- Tessa Fontaine, “Dispatch from the Carnival: And the Low Sky Opens”
- Naima Karczmar, “Naming It: An Essay in Six Parts”
- Lara Lillibridge, “Essay Notes on Attachment Disorder”
- Jim Ruland, “Come Back”
GRAND PRIZE WINNER in FICTION: “House Girl” by Kay Iguh (will receive free tuition, airfare and accommodation for the 2016 Disquiet Program, as well as publication in Guernica)
Kay Iguh is a fiction writer and graduate of the Creative Writing Program at New York University. She attended the New York State Summer Writer’s Institute in summer 2013 and will complete a four-week residency at the Vermont Studio Center in June. She currently teaches creative writing to high school students. A native Nigerian, she grew up in Houston and now lives in Brooklyn.
FINALISTS IN FICTION:
- Daniel Adams, “Lloyd Dennison, Greatest Living Dead Man in Show Business”
- Maria Anderson, “Cougar”
- John Gritton, “Wyoming, A Novel Excerpt”
- Jennifer Williams, “The Roof on Sunday”
- Michael Mau, “To the Touch”
Luso-American FLAD Scholarship Winners
With special thanks to our partner Fundação Luso-Americana, Disquiet is is proud to offer four scholarships to writers of Luso descent. All winners will receive free airfare, accommodation, and tuition for the 2016 Disquiet program in Lisbon.
Casey Walker
Casey Walker is the author of the novel Last Days in Shanghai. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has a PhD in English Literature from Princeton University.
Jason Lee Norman
Jason Lee Norman is a writer from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He received his MA in Creative Writing from the University of Manchester at the Centre for New Writing. He is the author of two short story collections, Americas and Beautiful Girls & Famous Men and is the editor and publisher behind the 40 Below winter anthologies.
Michael Spring
Michael Spring is the author of three small press poetry books and six chapbooks. His most recent book, Root of Lighting,was awarded an honorable mention for the 2012 Eric Hoffer Book Award, and a recent chapbook Blue Wolf won The 2013 Turtle Island Poetry Award. He is a martial art instructor and a poetry editor for the Pedestal Magazine and for a regional magazine Cobra Lily. He lives in O’Brien, Oregon, where he also works on a farm with his partner, permaculture designer Hazel Danene.
Fátima Policarpo
Fátima Policarpo is a Portuguese-American writer. She received her M.A. from New York University, where she studied literary responses to violence, she has taught writing and literature with a focus on human rights education, and she is presently a writer and editor in educational publishing. Her first novel, The Story Maker, is about the underground world of healers in 1970s Lisbon. Fátima was born in Cascais, Portugal, and grew up in northern California, where she currently lives with her family.