Nossrat Yassini Poetry Prize Winners & Finalists
2024-2025
Self-Mythology, Saba Keramati
Saba Keramati is a Chinese-Iranian writer from California. She is the author of Self-Mythology (University of Arkansas Press, 2024), selected by Patricia Smith for the Miller Williams Poetry Series. Saba's work has been published or is forthcoming in Lit Hub, Kenyon Review, The Margins, and other publications. She serves as the poetry editor for Sundog Lit and a board member for RAWI.
Song of My Softening, Omotara James
Omotara James is a writer, editor and visual artist. She is the author of the chapbook Daughter Tongue, selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she is a recipient of the 2019 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize. She earned her BA from Hofstra University and received her MFA from New York University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, The Academy of American Poets and elsewhere. She is a fellow of Lambda Literary and Cave Canem Foundation.
Book of Kin, Darius Atefat-Peckham
Darius Atefat-Peckham is an Iranian American poet and essayist. Atefat-Peckham is the author of Book of Kin, which won the 2023 Autumn House Poetry Prize, and the chapbook How Many Love Poems (Seven Kitchens Press, 2021). He is editor of his mother Susan Atefat-Peckham’s posthumous poetry collection Deep Are These Distances Between Us (CavanKerry Press, 2023). His work has appeared in Poem-a-Day, The Georgia Review, Indiana Review, Shenandoah, The Journal, Rattle, and elsewhere. His work has also been included in the anthology My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (University of Texas Press, 2020).
Longlist: Auguries & Divinations, Heather Treseler; Cloud Missives, Kenzie Allen; Coachella Elegy, Christian Gullette; Good Dress, Brittany Rogers; An Inheritance of Drowning, Dorsía Smith Silva; The Palace of Forty Pillars, Armen Davoudian; Pentimento, Joshua Garcia
2023-2024
Saltwater Demands a Psalm, Kweku Abimbola
Born in The Gambia in 1997, Kweku Abimbola earned his MFA in Poetry Writing from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He is of Gambian, Ghanaian, and Sierra Leonean descent. He is a finalist for the 2021 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, the second-place winner of Furious Flower’s 2020 poetry contest, and has work published and forthcoming in Shade Literary Arts, 20.35 Africa, The Common, Obsidian, Sunu Journal, and elsewhere. He works as a teaching artist for the literary non-profit Inside Out Literary Arts, where he holds workshops in poetry and creative writing for middle school students in Detroit Public Schools. He lives in Detroit, Michigan.
It's Not Love Till Someone Loses an Eye, Clay Ventre
Clay Ventre lives and writes in New England.
I'm Always So Serious, Karisma Price
Karisma Price is an assistant professor of English at Tulane University. A poet, screenwriter, and media artist, she is the author of I'm Always So Serious (Sarabande Books, 2023). Her work has appeared in publications including Poetry, Indiana Review, Oxford American, Four Way Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, and elsewhere. She is a Cave Canem Fellow.
Longlist: Portraits as Animals, Victoriano Cárdenas; The Scorpion's Question Mark, JD Debris; Eggtooth, Jesse Nathan; Tender Headed, Olatunde Osinaike; Master, Simon Shieh; Masculinity Parable, Myles Taylor; I Am the Most Dangerous Thing, Candace Williams.