With our 2022 Poetry Contest in full swing, we're ecstatic to finally announce the judge of this year's prize.
Rajiv Mohabir is the author of Cutlish (Four Way Books 2021, Finalist for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award, long listed for the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry), The Cowherd’s Son (Tupelo Press 2017, winner of the 2015 Kundiman Prize; Eric Hoffer Honorable Mention 2018) and The Taxidermist’s Cut (Four Way Books 2016, winner of the Four Way Books Intro to Poetry Prize, Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry in 2017), and translator of I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (Kaya Press 2019), which received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant Award and the 2020 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets.
His essays can be found in places like Asian American Writers Workshop’s The Margins, Bamboo Ridge Journal, Moko Magazine, Cherry Tree, Kweli, and others, and have been a “Notable Essay” in Best American Essays 2018. His memoir Antiman (Restless Books 2021, Finalist for the PEN Open Book Award, and the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir) received the 2019 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.
Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of poetry in the MFA program at Emerson College and the translations editor at Waxwing Journal.
After the contest officially closes this May, Rajiv will select a winner and runner-up from a group of up to 10 finalists. The winner will receive $1000 and publication in our annual prize anthology, forthcoming December 2022. The runner-up will also receive publication in the anthology. In addition, all finalists will be considered for general publication.
If you're interested in submitting, be sure to head over to Submittable for more information. We hope to read your work in this year's subs!
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Raymond Quattlebaum
July 21, 2022
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