Hobart and William Smith Colleges

The Tilling, Winner of the 2024 Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize

Selected by final judge Wendy S. Walters.
To be published on December 10, 2024.
Includes book release reading at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
And $2,000 prize.

Son of an African American father and a white mother, Matthew Morris writes through questions of race, identity, family history, and love. His nonfiction has been published in Seneca Review, Fourth Genre via the Steinberg Memorial Essay Prize, and Mid-American Review through the AWP Intro Journals Project, and he has received a scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. His essay “Tidal Wave,” published in apt, was cited as “notable” in Best American Essays 2020. He is a graduate of the University of Arizona MFA program and is pursuing a PhD in English at the University of Missouri—Columbia.

We would also like to acknowledge the following works:

Finalists

• Lucien Darjeun Meadows, Never Summer
• Kat Moore, Throat Full of Stars
• Megan Shevenock, What Is Simple
• Aïcha Martine Thiam, To Bring You My Love

* Withdrawn before selection of the winner

Semifinalists

• Pune Dracker, American Dick
• H.L. Hix, Close
• Karen Kao, Swimming Upside Down
• Messe Lee Kercheval, French Girl *
• Eric LeMay, Remember Me: An Essay
• Kristine Langley Mahler, Teen Queen Training
• Joe Sacksteder, Last Map
• Peter Jay Shippy, The Poetry Dopebook: Dictums, Apothegms, & Bloody Saws
• Jill Talbot, Empty Streets: Brief Essays
• Julie Marie Wade, Musical Chairs: An Elegy in 13 Parts

* Withdrawn before selection of the winner

Honorable Mentions

• Amelia Ada, Hard and Glad *
• Erik Anderson, All My YesterdaysBrenda Beardsley, An Anecdotal History of Eugenics: Fragments & Iterations
• Sandra Beasley, Second Reckoning: Essays After Memoir
• Stevie Belchak, Anatomy of Vanishing
• Adria Bernardi, Sidewalk & Other Nueral Networks of Well-Being
• J.A. Berstein, Elegy, 1991
• Marina Blitshteyn, Imagine a Future
• Dave Brennan, A Cyborg Father: Misreading Donna Haraway *
• Michael Chang, The Heartbreak Album
• Yvonne Conza, Long Game
• Eanlai P. Cronin, Unto the Nest
• EG Cunningham, Field Notes
• Jehanne Dubrow, Red Monsters: A Story of Reading
• Adam Fagin, The Book of Common Fate
• Beth Gilstrap, There Is News Along the Ohio River
• Sarah Giragosian, What Kind of Hawk
• Michael Hahn, Wrong Minority
• Mary Hollowell, Misadventures in Xi'an: INsights from an Adoptive Mother in China
• Jesse Lee Kercheval, Girl on a Carport
• Brandon Lewis, Marvelous Debris
• Jacqueline Lyons, Breakdown of Poses: Meditations on Divorce & Other Dissolutions
• JoAnne McFarland, American Graphic *
• Ted McLoof, Empty Calories and Male Curiosity
• Andi Myles, God Haunted: A Memoir of Evangelical Deconstruction in Lyric Essays
• Ben Miller, The Extravagant Art of Seeing
• Anne-Marie Oomen, Road Dreams
• Caleb Powell, When I Am Dictator
• Heather Quinn, Ghost Heart
• Laura Read, Crowded in the Body
• Boyer Rickel, What Happened to the Inca Doves?
• Esteban Rodriguez, Lessons in Inheritance
• Stephanie Sauer, The Book of Making
• Brian Schwartz, I Want to Say Goodbye Without Leaving
• Sara Slingerland Sheiner, Of Lack
  Marcela Sulak, Woman, Counting
• Val Thomas, Wild Horses: A Survival Lyric
• Erika Veurink, Suffering Well
• Julie Marie Wade, Meditation 39: A Sestina in Prose
• Ruth Williams, Female Dick

* Withdrawn before selection of the winner

I|I, Winner of 2022 The Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize

Selected by final judge Kazim Ali.
Published on November 15, 2022.
Included book release reading with Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
And $2,000 prize.

Katherine Indermaur is the author of two chapbooks and an editor for Sugar House Review. She is the winner of the Black Warrior Review 2019 Poetry Contest and the 2018 Academy of American Poets Prize, runner-up in the 92Y's 2020 Discovery Poetry Contest, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Alpinist, Coast|noCoast, Ecotone, Frontier Poetry, the Journal, New Delta Review, the Normal School, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Colorado State University and lives within sight of the Rocky Mountains.

We would also like to acknowledge the following works:

Finalists

• May-lee Chai, Telling
• Kate Colby, Paradoxx
• Jehanne Dubrow, Exhibitions
• Christine Hume, Everything I Never Wanted to Know*

* Withdrawn before selection of the winner

Semifinalists

• Faith Adiele, Begin. Again.
• Morgan Christie, Boolean Logic.
• Mark Dow, Each Thing Starts
• Brianna Johnson, In Defense of Abigail Williams (or Fire Sale)
• Kristine Langley Mahler, Teen Queen Training
• Leanne Ogasawara, Travels Through Paintings
• Joe Sacksteder, Last Map
• Jeffrey Skinner, CODEX.
• Matthew Vollmer, Nine One One
• Maya Jewell Zeller, A Brain and a Heart Went on a Walk

Honorable Mentions

• Barret Baumgart, The Weight of the Sky
• Katharine Coldiron, Weird New Shit
• Pune Dracker, Every now and then we hear our song
• Adam Fagin, The Book of Common Fate
• Leora Fridman, STATIC PALACE
• Noah Eli Gordon, An Index to [XXXX XXXXXXXX]'s Next 135 Works
• Noah Eli Gordon, dysgraphia
• Carolyn Guinzio, Phantom Haptic// Leaf
• Karen Holmberg, Family Tree: An Unearthing
• Jesse Lee Kercheval, Crash
• Lance Larsen, Aphorisms for a Lonely Planet
• Richard Lomuto, BLEAK LANDSCAPE IN THE KEY OF A
• Thomas Mira y Lopez, That Does No Good
• Laura Read, Circumstance and Geography
• Alex Stein, Franz Kafka's Blue Period
• Jeneva Burroughs Stone, R: An Aftermath
• Jill Talbot, Empty Streets: Essays
• Spring Ulmer, My Coup of You
• Julie Marie Wade, Meditation 39: A Sestina in Prose

Sound Like Trapped Thunder, Winner of 2020 The Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize

Selected by final judge Jenny Boully.
To be published March 15, 2021.
Included book release reading at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
And $2,000 prize.

Jessica Lind Peterson is a Minnesota-based essayist and playwright. Her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Orion, Seneca Review, River Teeth, Passages North, Alaska Quarterly Review, and others. She is co-founder of Yellow Tree Theatre and an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Hamline University in St. Paul. She splits her time between the suburbs of Minneapolis and a trailer in northern Minnesota that is painted green.

We would also like to acknowledge the following works:

Finalists

• Vanessa Saunders, The Flat Woman
• Dennis James Sweeney, You're the Woods Too
• Nance Van Winckel, Sister Zero

Semifinalists

• Chris Arthur, Wordwalks
• A. Balkan, Creature Apart
• Katharine Coles, The Stranger I Become*
• Sharon Dolin, The Book of Lost Aphorisms
• Noah Eli Gordon, An Index to Noah Eli Gordon's Next 135 Works
• Kristine Langley Mahler, Teen Queen Training
• Karen Luper, More Things Move Than Blood in the Heart
• Sarah Minor, Slím Confessions*
• Lynn Mundell, Let's Begin at the End
• Grace Prasad, The Translator's Daughter
• David Stevenson, Late and Uninvited: Twelve Lists
• Melissa Wiley, Skull Cathedral*
  * Withdrawn before finalist selection phase

Honorable Mentions

• Jeff Alessandrelli, And Yet
• J'Lyn Chapman, To Limn / Lying In
• Alex Checkovich, Triptych It
• Meredith Clark, Lyrebird
• Caroline Crew, Other Girls to Burn
• Debra Di Blasi, Selling the Farm: Descants from a Recollected Past
• Mark Dow, Each Thing Starts
• Gary Fincke, The Mayan Syndrome
• Anne Goldman, Wild Thing
• Gwen Goodwin, Mass for the Shut-Ins: Essays and Letters
• Geoffrey Hilsabeck, American Vaudeville
• MC Hyland, A Book of Borrowed Light
• Lesley Jenike, Hide Fox and All After
• Jacqueline Lyons, Breakdown of Poses
• Alexandria Peary, Mattress on the Floor
• Darby Price, All the Lands We Inherit: A Lament
• Zach Savich, Lecture Notes for the Contemporary Personal Essay
• Megan Shevenock, The Miraculous, Sometimes
• Eleanor Stanford, Grammar for an Unwritten Language
• Robert Stothart, Wyoming from the Algonquian
• Julie Marie Wade, Meditation 39
• Julie Marie Wade, P*R*I*D*E
• Brian Whalen, Zero
• Kirk Wilson, Life Among the Wavicles

Five Plots, winner of the inaugural Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize!

Selected by final judge John D'Agata.
Published November 6, 2018.
Included book release reading at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
And $2,000 prize.

You can order Five Plots from SPD, Amazon, of The College Store.

Erica Trabold is a Nebraska-born essayist. Her lyric essays appear in The Rumpus, Passages North, The Collagist, South Dakota Review, Seneca Review, Essay Daily, and elsewhere. A graduate of Oregon State University's MFA program and the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Erica writes and teaches in Portland, Oregon.

We would also like to acknowledge the following works:

Finalists

• A. Balkan, The Floor Is Something We Must Fight Against
• Lily Hoang, Little | Sleeping | Gretel
• Jessica Mooney, High Elopement Risk
• Dennis James Sweeney, You’re the Woods Too

Semifinalists

• Debra Di Blasi, Selling the Farm: Descants from a Recollected Past
• Heidi Czerwiec, Fluid States
• Sharon Dolin, The Book of Lost Aphorisms
• Abby Frucht, MAIDS
• Geoffrey Hilsabeck, American Vaudeville
• Elizabeth McConaghy, Migrations
• Nadia Owusu, Aftershocks: Dispatches from the Fault Lines of Identity
• JH Phrydas, Imperial Physique
• Donald Platt, Sun Pictures
• Jennifer Quartararo, An Arbitrary Formation of Unspecified Value
• Julie Marie Wade, Cats (Not the Musical)

Honorable Mentions

• Erin Bertram, It’s Not a Lonely World
• Erin Bertram, The Vanishing of Camille Claudel
• Shira Dentz, Sisyphusina
• Joanne Godley, Doubling Back, A Lyric Memoir of Longing and Identity
• Noah Eli Gordon, An Index to Noah Eli Gordon’s Next 135 Works
• Dina Hardy, Inside My Hat Is a Foreign Body I Cannot Dislodge
• Robert Miltner, Moveable Blue
• Kate Partridge, Northern Ledger
• Rachael Peckham, Shoot the Approach: Flights of Prose
• Monica Regan, Figure in a Field: Findings from the Cusp of the Anthropocene
• Boyer Rickel, Tempo Rubato
• Jill Talbot, I’ve Always Stayed Gone: Essays
• Rachel Toliver, My Cartographies

Named for the late poet and essayist, the Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize is a biennial book series. It was founded by the editors of Seneca Review in 2017 to support and celebrate the breadth of work being done in the essay form today, including traditional approaches to creative nonfiction, cross-genre and hybrid work, verse forms, text and image works, connected or related pieces, and "beyond category" projects. A new winner of the book prize series will be published by Seneca Review Books in the fall of even-numbered years.