From Keith Flynn and our friends at the Asheville Poetry Review:
The editors at the Asheville Poetry Review are pleased to announce the William Matthews Poetry Prize recipients for 2012. Becky Gould Gibson, from Winston-Salem, NC, was awarded first prize for her poem, “Heading Home,” and will receive $1000, plus publication in the next issue of the Asheville Poetry Review (Vol. 19, Issue 22, 2012), which will be released in November, 2012.
Second prize is awarded to Catherine Carter of Cullowhee, NC for her poem, “The Young.” She will receive $250, as well as publication.
Angela Kelly, from Spartanburg, South Carolina was the third prize recipient for her poem “time, and a little honey” and she will also be published in our next issue.
All three authors will be featured at a reading in Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville this summer.
And here are the bios of the three winners:
Becky Gould Gibson has published two prize-winning chapbooks of poetry, Off-Road Meditations (North Carolina Writers’ Network, 1989) and Holding Ground (White Eagle Coffee Store Press, 1996), as well as three full-length volumes: First Life (Emrys Press, 1997); Need-Fire, winner of the 2005 poetry book contest held by Bright Hill Press (published 2007); and Aphrodite’s Daughter, winner of Texas Review Press’s 2006 X.J. Kennedy Prize (published 2007). Need-Fire received the North Carolina Poetry Society’s 2008 Brockman-Campbell Award. From 2010 to 2011, Becky Gibson mentored young poets selected for the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Reading Series, a program sponsored by the North Carolina Poetry Society.
Catherine Carter lives in Cullowhee with her husband near Western Carolina University, where she teaches in and coordinates the English education program. Her first full-length collection, The Memory of Gills (LSU, 2006) received the 2007 Roanoke-Chowan Award from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association; her poem “Toast” won the 2009 North Carolina Writers’ Network Randall Jarrell Award. Her work has also appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Best American Poetry 2009, North Carolina Literary Review, Orion, Poetry, and Ploughshares, among others; her new book (LSU, February 2012) is The Swamp Monster at Home.
Angela Kelly is the author of four chapbooks of poetry: Post Script from The House of Dreams (Stepping Stone Press), winner of the SC Initiative Poetry Prize 2006; Weighing the Body Back Down (Middle Tennessee State University, winner of the 1996 Tennessee Chapbook Prize); tose banded and coherent ( Pudding House Publications, 1994); and Being the Camel (Pearl Editions, 1990). She has won the following awards: The Carrie McCray Nickens Fellowship in Poetry 2011 (SC Academy of Authors); The Yemassee Poetry Prize from The University of South Carolina 2003; South Carolina Literary Fellowship (South Carolina Arts Commission 1999);The Southern Women Writers Conference Emerging Voices Award (Berry College, GA, 1998); and The Gwendolyn Brooks Award (University of South Carolina) in 1990. She has a full-length poetry collection forthcoming in the spring of 2013 from Hub City Press.
The next reading period for the William Matthews Poetry Prize is from September 15-January 15, 2013. For the guidelines and more, visit: www.ashevillepoetryreview.com.