Switchback Books is thrilled to announce the results of the 2019 Gatewood Prize. The winner is Adelante by Jessica Guzman, selected by judge Patricia Smith.

Thank you to everyone who submitted manuscripts to this year’s contest. We are honored to read your work. Congratulations also to our finalists and semi-finalists, selected by the editors:

Finalists:

Marina Blitshteyn, "A Conversion”
Kelly Caldwell, “Letters to Forget”
Naomi Extra, “Ratchet Supreme”
Jordan Franklin, “When the Signals Come Home"
Gloria Muñoz, “Dawn’s Early”
Ines Pujos, “Lilly the Valley”
Nichole Riggs, “Lumes”
Mary Wilson, “Let’s Have Both”
Emma Winsor Wood, “Preferred Internal Landscape”

Semi-Finalists:

Julie Choffel, “At/Home”
C.R. Grimmer, “The Lyme Letters”
Alexis Jackson, “My Sister’s Country”
Safia Jama, “My Brother’s Menagerie"

Judge Patricia Smith's remarks on Adelante:

Adelante is unerringly fresh and restless, a treasure of deftly-honed narratives that manage to be both unleashed and enviably controll...

Fear not, dawdlers! We are extending the submission period for the 2019 Gatewood Prize by one week. We will now be accepting manuscripts through April 7th. You can submit your manuscripts through Submittable here, or read more about the contest guidelines and our esteemed judge Patricia Smith. 

If you'll be in Portland at AWP this week, please come by and see us at table T13096! We'll be hosting signings throughout the week, and a reading with Counterpath on Friday, 3/29 from 7-9 pm at Strum, 1415 SE Stark St. #C.

We're now open for pre-orders for our two new titles, Kristen Case's Principles of Economics and Irène Mathieu's Grand Marronage, which will launch at AWP 2019 in March. Order now to receive your copies of both titles as soon as they become available!

Switchback Books is thrilled to announce the upcoming publication of two books of poetry.

Principles of Economics by Kristen Case is the winner of the 2017 Gatewood Prize, selected by judge Heather Christle. The contest runner-up, Grand Marronage by Irène Mathieu, will be published as an Editor’s Choice selection.

Thank you to everyone who submitted manuscripts to this year’s contest. We are honored to read your work. Congratulations also to our finalists and semi-finalists, selected by the editors: 

Finalists
Nikia Chaney, akhi
Ines Pujos, Lilly of the Valley
Gale Thompson, Expeditions to the Polar Seas
Laura Wetherington, Parallel Resting Places

Semi-Finalists
Isabel Sobral Campos, Surrogate Language
Liz Chereskin, weather/report
Stella Corso, TEDIUM
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, The Many Names for Mother
Caridad Moro, Tortillera
Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad, So I Waited
Elizabeth Clark Wessel, Sticks


Judge Heather Christle’s remarks on Principles of Economics: 

Principles of Econom...

*We couldn't be more excited to make this announcement!* Switchback Books will be publishing Marisa Crawford's second collection of poems, REVERSIBLE, in early 2017.
 

The dream of the '90s is alive in REVERSIBLE, where the coping mechanisms for surviving the complexities of teenage girl existence are bound up in episodes of My So-Called Life, Cranberries lyrics, and the intimacy of friendship. REVERSIBLE is also a temporal study--saturated in the past and confronting anxiety about future and its possibilities. Relics from adolescence accumulate throughout the collection and transcend their original purposes, creating a narrative about life before the internet, feminist identity, and the persistent messiness of selfhood.
 

If you haven't yet read Crawford's first collection of poems, The Haunted House, well, we're jealous that you get to experience it for the first time. Pick it up here!
 

Marisa Crawford is the author of the poetry collection The Haunted House (Switchback, 2010), and the...

Switchback Books is thrilled to announce our 2014 Gatewood Prize winner, chosen by judge Dorothea Lasky:
 

But I Have Realized It by Crystal Curry
 

Crystal Curry is the author of But I Have Realized It: A Motivational Poem in Little Arcs, winner of the 2014 Gatewood Prize, selected by Dorothea Lasky (Switchback Books, forthcoming 2016), Our Chrome Arms of Gymnasium, winner of the Slope Editions Book Prize, selected by Dara Wier (Slope Editions, 2010) and the chapbook Logotherapy Pant (Cosa Nostra Editions, 2008). Her poems, reviews and poetry articles have appeared widely in publications including The Volta, Coldfront, Octopus, Denver Quarterly, Action Yes and others. Curry holds an MFA from the University of Iowa, an Ed.M from the University of Illinois and is a contract instructional designer, as well as a contributing editor at Coldfront Magazine. She lives in Van Cortlandt Village, BX, NYC with her husband, poet/artist Nico Vassilakis, their children and a little Bost...