2025 Louis Award Winner

Ichiban by Patricia Aya Williams

Thank you to all who submitted. We appreciate the privilege of reading your fine work. Every poem is a love letter to the reader, even poems of grief and longing, perhaps especially those.

Judge’s comments: I am particularly taken by the variety of angles through which the speaker views and recounts salient episodes from her life. Ichiban is unsparing, unsentimental poetry: coming of age and coming to terms.
—Donna Hilbert, author of Enormous Blue Umbrella