2014 Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry
We’re pleased to announce the 2014 winner of The Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry:
Bone Song by B.A. (Bunny) Goodjohn, of Lynchburg, VA
About Bone Song, our judge Craig Challender writes:
“Last night, you made love like a miller makes flour: detached, silent, / leaving the stone to do its work, the grinding of bone and skin.” B. A. Goodjohn’s plangent, lived-in voice surfaces in poem after poem in this collection, whether formal or free, lyric or narrative. In a time that too often privileges fractal facility over wisdom, Bone Song is a tonic—refreshing and vital.”
The winner will receive an honorarium of $1000, and publication by Briery Creek Press, to be released May 2015.
B.A. (Bunny) Goodjohn, a transplant from London, England, has fiction and poetry published with The Texas Review, The Cortland Review, Wind Magazine, Streetlight Magazine and Inkpot and has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her first novel, Sticklebacks and Snow Globes, was published by Permanent Press in Fall 2007 and was subsequently sold to Scribe Publishing (Australia) and Centrepolygraph (Russia). Sticklebacks took a BookSense Notable Award and made the Kirkus Best of 2007 list. She holds a BA in English from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (2004) and an MFA from The University of Maine’s Stonecoast Program (2007). She teaches English at Randolph College in Virginia and is Director of their Writing Program.
Other Finalists:
Non-Specific Symptoms, Jennifer Sperry Steinorth, Traverse City, MI
Simply to Know Its Name, Robert Aquinas McNally, of Concord, CA
Our Gratitude:
All entrants will receive a copy of the winning book after its release in Spring 2015.
Thank you to everyone who submitted. It was a pleasure and an honor to spend time reading your good work.
Briery Creek Press 