The American Poetry Review is happy to announce that this year’s APR/Honickman First Book Prize has been awarded to Chelsea Harlan for her manuscript Bright Shade, chosen by our guest judge, Jericho Brown. The book will be published in September 2022 and will be distributed by Copper Canyon Press through Consortium. 

Chelsea Harlan was born and raised in Appalachia.  She holds a BA in Literature and Visual Art from Bennington College, as well as an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow and a Rose Goldstein Scholar, and where she has enjoyed teaching English and creative writing. Her chapbook Mummy, written in collaboration with London-based painter Daisy Parris, was released by Montez Press in 2019, and her chapbook Country Music was recently released from Two Plum Press. She received the 2021 Robert Watson Literary Award from The Greensboro Review for her poem “Some Sunlight,” and she received the 2019-2020 Mikrokosmos Poetry Prize for her poem “Grimaldo’s Chair,” selected by sam sax.

We received over 1,000 submissions for the prize this year and are very grateful to have read so many excellent poems.