Willow Books is pleased to announce nominations for the Pushcart Prize 2020:

This is Where by Louise K. Waakaa’igan. Waakaa’igan is enrolled at Odaawaa Zaaga ’iganiing (Lac Courte Orielles Reservation) in northern Wisconsin. Louise is the recipient of the 2017 PEN Poetry Prize and also the first-place winner of Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop’s Broadside Competition (2016). Louise’s work has been previously published in PEN America, 21 Mythologies, The Moon Magazine, 27^th Letter, Words in Gray Scale, and Doors Adjacent. She was released this year from the Shakopee Correctional Institution in Minnesota.

califia’s daughter by devorah major. major served as San Francisco’s Third Poet Laureate. She has five poetry books, the most recent and then we became, two novels, four chapbooks and a host of short stories, essays, and poems in anthologies and periodicals. Trade Routes, a symphony by Guillermo Galindo with spoken word poetry and song by devorah major premiered at the Oakland East Bay Symphony in 2006. In June 2015 major premiered her poetry play Classic Black: Voices of 19th Century African-Americans in San Francisco at the S.F. International Arts Festival. devorah major performs her work nationally and internationally with and without musicians.

Raising King by Joseph Ross. Ross is the author of three books of poetry: Ache (2017), Gospel of Dust (2013) and Meeting Bone Man (2012). His poems appear in many places including, The Los Angeles Times, Poet Lore, Xavier Review, The Southern Quarterly and Drumvoices Revue. He has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and won the 2012 Pratt Library/Little Patuxent Review Poetry Prize. He recently served as the 23rd Poet-in-Residence for the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society in Howard County, Maryland. He teaches English and Creative Writing at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C.

Shackled Freedom: Black Lives in the American South by Dasan Ahanu. Ahanu is an award-winning poet and performance artist, public speaker, community organizer, educator, scholar and emcee born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is an Alumni Nasir Jones Fellow at Harvard’s Hip Hop Archive and Research Institute, resident artist at the St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation/Hayti Heritage Center, and visiting lecturer at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He has performed across the country, appeared on national radio and TV, published three books of poetry, been featured in various periodicals and released numerous recordings. He works with organizations and institutions to develop effective arts strategies to enhance their work in the community. Dasan is currently managing a grant funded initiative as the Rothwell Mellon Program Director for Creative Futures with Carolina Performing Arts. He swings a mean pen and “represents the SOUTH.”

The Pushcart Prize was named among the most influential projects in the history of American publishing by Publishers Weekly.

PushcartPrize.com