We are very excited to share with you the winners and finalists of this year’s Stephen Dunn Prize.
The winner, this year, is Alysia Harris for her poem, Omnipotence. Our judge Martha Collins writes:
I delight in this poem for its surprises, its mysteries, its structural and emotional complexities, its narrative fragmentations and juxtapostions.
And we are also excited to present you with two finalists’ poems: Diorama by Richard Garcia and Charms (3) by Wendy Mnookin.
We also have many other compelling poems in this issue that we are sure you will enjoy.
Lastly, we’d like to welcome January Gill O’Neil as the new Co-Poetry Editor of Solstice. January brings a wealth of experience as both a writer and, through her work with Mass Poetry, promoter of other poets’ work. We couldn’t be more excited to have such a thoughtful and accomplished person join our team.
You can read her poem, Sober, in this issue and learn more about her on our staff page.
Thank you to everyone who entered this year’s contest – it was a pleasure to read so many fine submissions.
Ben Berman
Ben Berman is the author of three books of poems and the collection of essays, Writing While Parenting, a 2023 Times Literary Supplement Best Book of the Year. He has won the Peace Corps Award for the Best Book of Poetry, has been shortlisted twice for the Massachusetts Book Awards and has received awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, New England Poetry Club and Somerville Arts Council. He’s been teaching for twenty-five years and currently teaches creative writing classes at Brookline High School. He lives in the Boston area with his wife and two daughters.
