Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has selected the winners for its annual book awards for poetry and short fiction.
Safiya Sinclair has won the book prize in poetry for her manuscript “Cannibal,” chosen by guest judges David Baker and Hilda Raz with editor-in-chief Kwame Dawes. Dustin M. Hoffman has won the book prize in fiction for his manuscript “One-Hundred Knuckled Fist,” chosen by guest judges Elizabeth Nunez and Bernardine Evaristo with Dawes.
Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and received her master of fine arts in poetry at the University of Virginia. She is the author of “Catacombs,” a chapbook of poetry and essays. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, the Cincinnati Review, the Journal, Devil’s Lake and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a writing fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Amy Clampitt Residency Award, an Emerging Writer Fellowship from Aspen Summer Words and an Academy of American Poets Prize. She is pursuing a doctoral degree in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California, where she is a Dornsife Doctoral Fellow.
Hoffman spent 10 years painting houses in Michigan before getting his master of fine arts from Bowling Green State University and his doctorate from Western Michigan University. His stories have recently appeared in Pleiades, Smokelong Quarterly, Bat City Review, Midwestern Gothic, Juked, Cimarron Review, The Journal and Threepenny Review. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Winthrop University in South Carolina.
The winners were chosen from more than 1,200 submissions from around the world. The winners will each receive a $3,000 prize and publication by the University of Nebraska Press, and their books will be available in September 2016.
The competition, in its 13th year, runs from Jan. 15 to March 15 annually. Submission details and a list of past winners are available at http://go.unl.edu/ct6g.
Founded in 1926, Prairie Schooner is a national literary quarterly published with the support of the English Department at UNL. It publishes fiction, poetry, essays and reviews by beginning, mid-career and established writers.
