2022 Perugia Press Prize Results
WINNER: American Sycamore by Lisbeth White
American Sycamore is an exploration of racial identity and the natural world, rooted in the mythopoetics of wilderness and ancestry as sources of trauma, grief, wonder, and tremendous resource. In pursuit of understanding the nuances of belonging and displacement in a Black mixed-race feminine body, Lisbeth White travels through mythic, biological, and geological landscapes, attending to the body and its beautiful and terrifying questions. Her journey manifests in a poetic helix of recurring bridges, trees, myths, origins, and awakenings. From the bayou, to Belgium, to Barbados, these poems traverse global terrain while interrogating the dark past/present of America. In American Sycamore, the poet examines the Black diaspora, the spiritual South, ancestral reparation, and the sacred feminine, inviting the reader into a deep conversation of seeking and recovery.
Lisbeth White (she/they) is a lover of the earth, writer, developmental editor, and elemental energy healer. As a writer, she has received awards, fellowships, and residencies from VONA, Callaloo, Tin House, Split This Rock, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, and Blue Mountain Center. As a healer and ritualist, she has been a facilitator of community-based workshops utilizing arts and earth-based practices to connect artists, writers, and land stewards with social and healing justice organizations. American Sycamore is her first book.
* American Sycamore will be released in September 2022 *
FINALISTS:
Ayesha Raees, Within Sky Kissing God Christina Vega, Hand to Mouth
SEMI-FINALISTS:
Mary Ardery, They're Not Lying When They Tell You You'll Dream of the Dead Monique-Adelle Callahan, Rupture Anaïs Deal-Márquez, I Made You Pozole Caitlin Dwyer, In the Salt Stephanie Glazier, Of Fish & Country Christen Noel Kauffman, Acts of Protection Victoria Korth, The Granite Door Alysse Kathleen McCanna, FishWife Jordan Osborne, The Damselfish Year Mira Rosenthal, Territorial Jeri Theriault, Self-Portrait as Homestead Theresa Vincent, believe breath, believe silence, Maria Williams, Snow