The 2024 William Matthews Poetry Prize Winners, selected by David Kirby

The editors of Asheville Poetry Review are pleased to announce the WILLIAM MATTHEWS POETRY PRIZE RECIPIENTS for 2024.

Mary Makofske, from Warwick, NY, is awarded first prize for her poem, “Sex, That Peacock,” and will receive $1000, plus publication in The Asheville Poetry Review (Vol. 31, Issue 33, 2024), which will be released in December 2024.

Second prize is awarded to Paul Alexander, from Forest Hills, NY, for his poem, “Only in Darkness Can You See the Stars” He will receive $250, as well as publication.

Craig Van Rooyen resides on the central coast of CA. He is the third prize recipient for his poem “Daylight Savings Poem,” and he will also be published in our next issue.

Mary Makofske’s latest books are No Angels (Kelsay, 2023), The Gambler’s Daughter (The Orchard Street Press, 2022); World Enough, and Time (Kelsay, 2017); and Traction (Ashland, 2011), winner of the Richard Snyder Prize. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Asheville Poetry Review, Poetry, Poetry East, American Journal of Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Comstock Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. She has received the Slant Hudson-Fowler Prize, and first prizes in poetry from Atlanta Review, New Millennium Writings, and the Littoral Press Broadside Contest. www.marymakofske.com

Paul Alexander is the author of Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday’s Last Year, published in 2024 by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canongate in the U.K. Among his previous books are Rough Magic, a biography of Sylvia Plath, and Salinger, a biography of J.D. Salinger that was the basis of a feature documentary that appeared on American Masters on PBS, Netflix, and HBO. He has written for a number of publications, including The New York Times, New York, The Nation, and The Washington Post, where he is a regular book critic. His poetry has appeared in The New Republic, Poetry, The Sewanee Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poem, Mississippi Review, The Black Warrior Review, Connecticut River Review, The Bennington Review, and The Gay and Lesbian Review. He teaches at Hunter College.

Craig Van Rooyen is a poet and a judge, living on the Central Coast of California. His poems have been published in 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, Cincinnati Review, Narrative, New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. He is a past winner of the Rattle Poetry Prize and the Neil Postman Award. He received an MFA from Pacific University.