Red Hen Press Announces the Winners of 2013 Awards Series

Red Hen Press is pleased to announce the winners of its 2013 awards series. The Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award, theRHP Short Story Award, and the RHP Poetry Award are given each year for, respectively, an unpublished original poetry collection, short story, and individual poem. Together with the A Room of Her Own Foundation, Red Hen Press also awards the To the Lighthouse Poetry Publication Prize to a female author of an unpublished original poetry collection. Last year, Red Hen Press and The Los Angeles Review held the first annual Wild Light Poetry Contest for an original poem. All winners receive publication and an honorarium.

The winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award is Dean Kostos. His collection, This Is Not a Skyscraper, was selected by final judge Mark Doty from 512 entries and will be published in the spring of 2015. Kostos is the author of Rivering, Last Supper of the Senses, The Sentence That Ends with a Comma, and the chapbook Celestial Rust. Kostos will receive a $3,000 honorarium. Recent winners of the Benjamin Saltman Award include Frannie Lindsay (Our Vanishing), Brynn Saito (The Palace of Contemplating Departure), and Lillian-Yvonne Bertram (But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise).

The winner of the To the Lighthouse Poetry Publication Prize is Sarah Wetzel. Her collection, River Electric with Light, was chosen by final judge Tracy K. Smith from 288 entries and will be published in the spring of 2015. Wetzel is a poet and engineer who splits her time between Tel Aviv, Manhattan, and Rome. She holds an engineering degree from Georgia Tech and an MBA from UC Berkeley. Wetzel will receive a $1,000 honorarium

The winners of the Red Hen Press Short Story Award are Cheyenne Baudy and Elizabeth French. Baudy's story "TheDisassembly Line" and French's story "Dissection" were selected by final judge Ron Carlson from 311 entries and will be published in a future issue of The Los Angeles Review. Baudy has written a play, three screenplays and a novel, The LaMapía Brothers, which explores the effects of NAFTA on rural Mexican families. French's stories have appeared in The North American Review, StoryQuarterly, Sundog: The Southeast Review, and the anthology Microfiction (Norton, 1996). Baudy and French will each receive a $500 honorarium.

The winner of the Red Hen Press Poetry Award is Sam Witt. His poem, "Little Doomsday Clock" was selected by final judge Hilda Raz from 676 entries and will be published in a future issue of The Los Angeles Review. Witt's first book of poetry, Everlasting Quail, won the Katherine Nason Bakeless First Book Prize in 2000, sponsored by Breadloaf. His second book, Sunflower Brother, won the Cleveland State University Press Open Book competition for 2006, and was published in 2007. Witt will receive a $1,000 honorarium.

The winner of the Wild Light Poetry Contest is Philip Shaw. Shaw's "What's She Doing Now" was chosen by final judge Kate Gale from 203 entries and will be published in a future issue of The Los Angeles Review. Shaw's writing has appeared in Conversations Across Borders and Everywhere Magazine. His chapbook, AEIOUnever?, was published in the spring of 2012, and he leaves behind evidence of his work, daily, at www.aRoughDraft.com. Shaw will receive a $1,000 honorarium.

The final judges for the 2014 Red Hen Press Benjamin Saltman Award, Short Story Award, and Poetry Award will be Douglas Kearney, Pete Fromm, and William Trowbridge, respectively. Previous judges include Claudia Rankine, B.H. Fairchild, Nick Flynn, Wanda Coleman, Philip Levine, Eloise Klein Healy, David St. John, Dorianne Laux, Thomas Lux, and AliciaOstriker. Guidelines for the 2014 Red Hen Press awards can be found at www.redhen.org.

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