Winners Circle

Please join us in celebrating our 2023 contest winners. We are honored to share their poetry and their stories.

Winners Circle

Please join us in celebrating our 2022 contest winners. We are honored to share their poetry and their stories.

POETRY

OUR 2023 WINNERS

growing pains
First Place

This Is Not America

By Raya Yarbrough

READ THIS IS NOT AMERICA

sunflowers
Second Place

Sahara

By Cassie Lipton

READ SAHARA

blue eyes
Third Place

Elemental

By Jenna Martinez

READ Elemental

WINNERS

About Raya, Cassie, & Jenna

monique jonath

first place winner

Raya Yarbrough

Raya Yarbrough is a writer and singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles, California. Raya has written and produced three albums of eclectic music, most recently Artifacts of Grace (2020), which is based on a series of paintings and sculptures by artist Pam Douglas that explores the way female-bodied experiences intersect with larger issues of justice and equality. In addition to songs, Raya is a playwright, writes poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction about being a parent in a multiracial family, while also being a working artist. Her voice and original music have been featured in many TV series, including Battlestar Galactica, and Outlander. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children and is finishing a humorous memoir about her daughter’s first five years.

rayayarbrough.com

I don’t know the answer, but I can feel it. That emotional truth is the engine behind all my writing.

Mark Graham

second place winner

Cassie Lipton

I’m a Charlottesville-based poet currently in my 4th year at the University of Virginia, where I am a double major in Music Performance and Global Sustainability. I started writing at a young age (including handwriting 100 pages of a novel in the fifth grade) but didn’t start writing poetry until college. My first year at UVA, I joined the Washington Literary Society and Debating Union (which I am currently Vice President of) and found an ever-present platform to explore my writing and share it with others. Indeed, I read Sahara to this group within a week of writing it, and this organization has pushed and inspired me to be the writer I am today. I hope to be a lifelong writer, as this is how I make sense of the world.

Poetry, to me, is the most freeing form of writing. It doesn’t always have to make sense; it doesn’t always have to be “right.” Writing poetry is like the feeling I get after climbing a mountain on a crisp fall day: I stand at the peak, I see the world stretched out before me, and it is beautiful.

Ann Tinkham

third place winner

Jenna Martinez

Jenna Martinez (she/her) is a queer, Mexican-American writer and printmaker. Her writing has appeared in Homology Lit and Femme, Collectively Zine 0.1. Jenna is a recipient of the Support for Artists grant from the Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center funded by Cuyahoga Arts and Culture and Literary Cleveland’s 2023-2034 Breakthrough Writing Residency. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, she now lives in Cleveland, Ohio. She is at work on a collection of poems exploring the aliveness of place and how place mixes with her ancestry, her queerness, and her elemental makeup.

I once heard Sandra Cisneros speak, and she said, “Write the stories that only you can tell.” This poem is born from that telling.

POETRY

OUR 2023 Honorable Mentions

growing pains

Rock, Paper, Scissors

By Mridvi Khetan

READ Rock, Paper, Scissors

sunflowers

Paper Cuts

by Maria Oglesby

READ Paper Cuts

blue eyes

The World Could Be Beautiful

by Dylan Lyons

READ The World Could Be Beautiful

blue eyes

After 9/11

by Joan Roger

READ After 9/11

POETRY

OUR 2022 WINNERS

growing pains
First Place

Raining Red

By Mridvi Khetan

READ Raining Red

sunflowers
Second Place

In The Tide

By Emily BALCHUNAS

READ In The Tide

blue eyes
Third Place

Do You Remember?

By Robert Watt

READ DO YOU REMEMBER?