The 2025 William Matthews Poetry Prize Winners, selected by Nickole Brown
The editors of Asheville Poetry Review are pleased to announce the WILLIAM MATTHEWS POETRY PRIZE RECIPIENTS for 2025.
First Prize
Emily W. Pease, from Williamburg, VA, is awarded first prize for her poem, “Lone Pony on the Last Farm in the City,” and will receive $1000, plus publication in The Asheville Poetry Review (Vol. 32, Issue 34, 2025), which will be released in December 2025.
Second Prize
Second prize is awarded to Stephen Kampa, from Elkton, FL, for his poem, “The Big One.” He will receive $250, as well as publication.
Third Prize
Amy Fleury resides in Eau Claire, WI. She is the third prize recipient for her poem “Spellwork For A Preemie,” and she will also be published in our next issue.
Emily W. Pease is a poet and fiction writer. Her short stories appear in The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review (Editor’s Prize in Fiction, 1999), Shenandoah (Bevel Summers Prize, 2014), The Alaska Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review online, Narrative (top five story of the week, 2017), Witness, and elsewhere. Her collection, Let Me Out Here, won the inaugural C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Award at Hub City Press in 2018, judged by Lee K. Abbott. Her poems appear in The Florida Review, Juniper, One, Litmosphere, and Rattle (Ekphrastic Challenge winner, June, 2021). She holds an MFA in Fiction from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and has been a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference. She lives in Williamsburg, VA, where she taught writing for many years at William & Mary.
Stephen Kampa is the author of four collections of poetry: Cracks in the Invisible (2011), Bachelor Pad (2014), Articulate as Rain (2018), and World Too Loud to Hear (2023). His work has appeared in The Yale Review, Cincinnati Review, Southwest Review, Hopkins Review, Poetry Northwest, Subtropics, and Smartish Pace. He was also included in Best American Poetry 2018, Best American Poetry 2024, and Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic (2020). During the spring of 2021, he was the writer in residence at the Amy Clampitt House. He teaches at Flagler College.
Amy Fleury is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Beautiful Trouble, and Sympathetic Magic, both from the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry at Southern Illinois University Press, and a chapbook, Reliquaries of the Lesser Saints (RopeWalk Press). Recent poems have been published in 32 Poems, Image, swamp pink, and other journals and have been awarded the Mary C. Mohr Prize from Southern Indiana Review and the 2024 Best Spiritual Literature Award in Poetry. She has held residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Amy Clampitt House and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She lives and teaches in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
The next reading period for the William Matthews Poetry Prize is from September 15, 2025 – January 15, 2026.
The final judge will be Ted Kooser. For the guidelines and more, visit ashevillepoetryreview.submittable.com.
The 2026 William Matthews Poetry Prize
First Prize: $1,000, publication in Asheville Poetry Review, and a featured reading in Asheville
Second Prize: $250, publication, and a featured reading in Asheville
Third Prize: Publication and a featured reading in Asheville
Judge for 2026: Ted Kooser
The final judge will read anonymous manuscripts (all identifying information will be removed from the poems).
All submissions will be considered for publication. Submission Deadline: January 15 of each year. Send 1-3 poems, any style, any theme, any length, with a $20 entry fee.
Online submissions only, through Submittable:
*Poetry email submissions are not accepted
Previous Prize Winners
Winners of the 2024 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Mary Makofske, “Sex, That Peacock”
Second Place: Paul Alexander, “Only in Darkness Can You See the Stars”
Third Place: Craig Van Rooyen, “Daylight Savings Poem”
(Judge: David Kirby)
Winners of the 2023 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Kate DeLay, “Repentance”
Second Place: Rodney Gomez, “Tableau With Tarantella, Public Housing, and Underwood Ham”
Third Place: Jeanne Wagner, “Penelope”
(Judge: Diane Seuss)
Winners of the 2022 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Maura High, “Verbesina Occidentalis”
Second Place: Christina Hutchins, “Meeting Memory on the Mendocino Coast”
Third Place: Anna Lena Phillips Bell, “Scissors”
(Judge: Marilyn Nelson)
Winners of the 2021 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Sean Webb, “American Genesis”
Second Place: Annie Woodford, “An Aunt Story, Improvised as a Blues Line”
Third Place: Earl Sherman Braggs, “Still Life”
(Judge: Quincy Troupe)
Winners of the 2020 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Denver Butson, “Study Guide”
Second Place: Melanie Tafejian, “On Occupation”
Third Place: Mark Kyungsoo Bias, “How God Breaks”
(Judge: Ilya Kaminsky)
Winners of the 2019 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Jude Nutter, “The Lions of Chauvet”
Second Place: Sarah Rose Nordgren, “Blessing”
Third Place: Joshua Martin, “Approaching My Brother, I Think of Karl Wallenda”
(Judge: Dorianne Laux)
Winners of the 2018 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Rosa Lane, “The Long Meadow”
Second Place: Kathleen Spivack, “M. Caillebotte Paints Mme. Boissiere Knitting”
Third Place: Mary B. Moore, “Quaking Grass”
(Judge: Alfred Corn)
Winners of the 2017 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Jared Harél, “You Want It Darker”
Second Place: Sarah Gordon, “The Last American Tour, 1953”
Third Place: Chelsea Woodard, “Wren’s Nest”
(Judge: Cornelius Eady)
Winners of the 2016 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Marilee Richards, “The Double Zero”
Second Place: Anne Valley-Fox, “To Love India”
Third Place: Catherine Carter, “First Witch”
(Judge: Joy Harjo)
Winners of the 2015 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Matthew Wimberley, “All the Great Territories”
Second Place: Patrick Swaney, “Late Fall, Late Afternoon”
Third Place: Debbie Benson, “Papanasam”
(Judge: Garrett Hongo)
Winners of the 2014 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Bruce Sager, “The Lot of Stars”
Second Place: T. J. Sandella, “Flight”
Third Place: Dave Seter, “What My Uncle is Trying to Say”
(Judge: Billy Collins)
Winners of the 2013 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Bart Rawlinson, “Jonah and Mr. Bones”
Second Place: Shelley Puhak, “On High School Reunions and Hurricane Agnes”
Third Place: David Brendan Hopes, “Spade”
(Judge: Patricia Smith)
Winners of the 2012 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Becky Gould Gibson, “Heading Home”
Second Place: Catherine Carter, “The Young”
Third Place: Angela Kelly, “time, and a little honey”
(Judge: David Wagoner)
Winners of the 2011 William Matthews Prize
First Place: Michael White, “The Milkmaid”
Second Place: Bruce Bond, “Jon Faddis and the High Note”
Third Place: Mary Makofske, “Museum of Torture, San Gimignano, Italy”
(Judge: Sebastian Matthews)
