We have the honor to announce the selection of The Sound of Her Good Name, by Candace R. Curran of Shelburne Falls, MA, as the winner of our 2022 chapbook contest. Candace becomes the newest member of Slate Roof Press, and receives the $500 Elyse Wolf Prize and publication of her chapbook in an art-quality edition. This year we focused on poets from our home territory in western Massachusetts. |
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Finalists:Sarah Levine of Easthampton, MA, for Each Knuckle with Sugar
Annie G. Rogers of Amherst, MA, for Becoming BirdWe
thank everyone who participated for their considerable time, work, and
heart in preparing and submitting a manuscript. The selection process
was difficult; we received many excellent manuscripts representing a
broad spectrum of poetic styles and concerns, and each one was carefully
considered. Our selection process was blind. About the winning author and manuscript Candace R. Curran is the author of Playing in Wrecks, and a co-author of the collaboration, Bone Cages (with John Hodgen, Doug Anderson, and others), both published by Haley’s Press. Her poems have been published in Meat For Tea, Silkworm, RAWNerVZ, and elsewhere; and anthologized in Writing the Land, Honoring Nature, WTL: Northeast, Poet’s Seat Poetry Silver Anniversary, Compass Roads, and Poems in the Time of Covid. She has won the Poets Seat Contest
twice. Candace has organized and participated in word and image
collaborations including Four On The Floor, Three On a Tree, INTERFACE
I-I0, and Exploded View. She has also served children and adults for
many years in both public and school libraries. Candace's partner is a
librarian, and books are an important part of their world.
We at Slate Roof were drawn to The Sound of Her Good Name for
its truth telling, piercing perceptions of human behavior, and fierce
momentum. It is an open-eyed, heart-felt manuscript that handles the
most difficult material with grace and craft. Here is an excerpt:
He sets about stringing a necklace
if she'll have it taking up her wrists
placing them around his own neck
he believes he loves her she loves him
not and most likely he can’t make her
sing but what won’t she do to skirt that
sting so he collars her welding as fast
as petals fall weaving her to his thin
wishbone on vines he hopes will take
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