2012 Winner

Words on Edge

by Michael Leong

Judge: Robert Fitterman

This year's winner has just been announced please check back for more information on this release.

2011 Winner

Since You Have No Body

by Michael Fallon

staple-bound, hand-debossed cover, 40pp. $9.00

Judge: Corey Mesler

Great titles, some really fine final lines, a diverse yet consistent voice, and beautifully shaped poems. They have a true voice, a lyrical quality missing in some contemporary poets' work, and some outstanding imagery (especially nice bird images which seemed to have traveled down the years from Yeats). Overall, Since You Have No Body is about making peace with the organic as well as ontological world, with death, with the shadow and hence with the void.

2010 Winner

House

by Janet McCann

staple-bound 27pp. $9.00

Judge : Barbara Crooker

What I loved in House was its central metaphor, the way the poems flexed and explored the theme, which included physical houses, dream houses, Jungian archetype houses, houses of childhood, rented houses, a house turned into a restaurant, houses visited while traveling, famous houses (Frank Gehry's Dancing House in Prague). And then there were poems about the things that furnish a house: "Chairs," windows ("Opening Out"), attic staircases ("Passage"), pajamas, backyards with birds at the feeder and trees that "burn beautifully in their dying."... Bravo!

-Judge, Barbara Crooker

2009 Winner

You Must Not Know Too Much

by Chris Bullard

staple-bound 33pp. $9.00

Judge : Deborah Ager

Strongly inspired by nature, this collection of poetry by Chris Bullard demonstrates attention to craft in lines such as "the backyard plowed full-steam through summer." Whether he's discussing "hieroglyphic butterflies" or our inclination to "hush them [dandelions] with poison," every turn is imaginative and innovative. This is a pleasurable read.

-Judge, Deborah Ager

2008 Winner

Stones Rounded By Years of Conversation

by W R Hastings

staple-bound 32pp. $9.00

Judge : Kimmika Williams

Natural light and trickling water course through the poems in this collection, grounded by stones. Poems on two very different kissing sculptures spit the book in twain, the first half warm and sunny and the second half cool and wet. This schism allows for observations to wind through the book, echoing the sentiment "Let me be a flat stone half whose body touches earth, the other half the rain."

2007 Winner

Elsewhere

by Ellen Sullins

staple-bound 36pp.$9.00

Judge : Lisa Sewell

These poems about memory, family, the past, and identity cover familiar ground but surprise and engage with language that compels the reader forward with its frank jazz and verve, with its unstoppable forward momentum.

-Judge, Lisa Sewell

2006 Winner

Falling Out of Orbit

by Anthony White

Out-of-Print

Judge : Daniel Nester

This Flute Is a Silver Bus
this bell a worn guidebook
warm in my hand
this drum is a manhole
its tight round skin
hides a dark tunnel
smoothly I flow down
the skin reverberates behind me.

2005 Winner

Double Exposure

by Constance Boyle

staple-bound 36pp $8.00

Judge : Charles Cantalupo

Beautifully conveying a time and place, she meshes scenes from childhood and adulthood, the relationship between father and daughter juxtaposed with birth and death. The haunted imagery brings depth to pain and fear, which transcends age and gender.

2004 Winner

Crazy Mary and others

by Michele Belluomini

staple-bound 36pp $6.00

Judge : Lamont B. Steptoe

Michele Belluomini's second book of poetry exploring marginalized characters in Philadelphia many of the poems in this collection are about `Crazy Mary', an eccentric character, full of life and lunacy who appears around town displaying her peculiarities and giving insights, through behavior, to life.

2001 Winner

...and Guppies Eat Their Young

by Deborah Filanowski

Out-of-Print

Now in its second reprint, ..and Guppies explores a woman, a mother, a wife embracing her roles within her family and the lunacy and struggles which accompany those roles. Reflecting herself as a symbol of motherhood and wifehood, she describes her remorse and resignation over who she has become and what opportunities she has left behind. The moments within are bittersweet, charming and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny

2005 Winner

Following Richard Brautigan

by Corey Mesler

Out-of-Print

Judge : William Brandon III

Foreword : ruth weiss

Mesler's passion in all things whether it is his painful disappointment at the plebian nature of his Literary Mecca or his shy reverence for the mysterious girl reading as she walks down the street.

Mesler... puts you in his shoes, makes you walk his steps and invites you to feel every moment of triumph and failure. For any human being capable of feeling a fraction of his passion Following Richard Brautigan will remind you of some part of your life or inspire you to begin a new life and simply sit back and enjoy where it takes you.

-Judge, William M. Brandon III

2004 Winner

In a Garden of Eden

by Justin Vicari

Out-of-Print

Judge : Colleen Davis

Justin Vicari's first book of short fiction is a gloomy vision of one man's downward spiral lifestyle of drugs and hard living. His life with his girlfriend and the loneliness and despair seem an odd vision of "Eden". His estrangement from his mother and his on and off relationship with his girlfriend increase the separation between himself and the outside world. Contest judge Colleen Davis remarked, "It is a very visual universe, but not one that I would want to live in."