Congratulations to Candace R. Curran, winner of the 2022 Elyse Wolf Prize/Slate Roof Press Annual Chapbook Contest!
We have the honor to announce the selection of The Sound of Her Good Name, by Candace R. Curran of Shelburne Falls, MA, as the winner of our 2022 chapbook contest. Candace becomes the newest member of Slate Roof Press and receives the $500 Elyse Wolf Prize and publication of her chapbook in an art-quality edition. This year we focused on poets from our home territory in western Massachusetts.
Finalists
Sarah Levine of Easthampton, MA, for Each Knuckle with Sugar Annie G. Rogers of Amherst, MA, for Becoming Bird
We thank everyone who participated for their considerable time, work, and heart in preparing and submitting a manuscript. The selection process was difficult; we received many excellent manuscripts representing a broad spectrum of poetic styles and concerns, and each one was carefully considered. Our selection process was blind.
About the winning author and manuscript
Candace R. Curran is the author of Playing in Wrecks, and a co-author of the collaboration, Bone Cages (with John Hodgen, Doug Anderson, and others), both published by Haley’s Press. Her poems have been published in Meat For Tea, Silkworm, RAWNerVZ, and elsewhere; and anthologized in Writing the Land, Honoring Nature, WTL: Northeast, Poet’s Seat Poetry Silver Anniversary, Compass Roads, and Poems in the Time of Covid. She has won the Poets Seat Contest twice. Candace has organized and participated in word and image collaborations including Four On The Floor, Three On a Tree, INTERFACE I-I0, and Exploded View. She has also served children and adults for many years in both public and school libraries. Candace's partner is a librarian, and books are an important part of their world.
We at Slate Roof were drawn to The Sound of Her Good Name for its truth telling, piercing perceptions of human behavior, and fierce momentum. It is an open-eyed, heart-felt manuscript that handles the most difficult material with grace and craft.
Here is an excerpt:
Daisy Ring
He sets about stringing a necklace
if she'll have it taking up her wrists
placing them around his own neck
he believes he loves her she loves him
not and most likely he can’t make her
sing but what won’t she do to skirt that
sting so he collars her welding as fast
as petals fall weaving her to his thin
wishbone on vines he hopes will take
ABOUT ELYSE WOLF
Elyse Wolf is a signature member and five-year Merit Award recipient of the Colored Pencil Society of America. She received a B.A. in Art from UMass Amherst and went to the Art Students League in New York for two years on a Ford Foundation Scholarship where she studied with Morris Kantor and Theodoros Stamos. After moving to Washington, D.C., she took classes at the Corcoran Museum School Open Program with William Christenberry and Brockie Stevenson.
Her Artwork has appeared in numerous shows, including the Susan K. Black Blossom Two-Year Museum Traveling show, the John Pence Gallery in San Francisco, the Salmagundi Club and The National Arts Club in New York City, the Corcoran Museum Biennial, numerous CPSA International shows, The Art League in Alexandria, VA, The Troika Gallery in Easton, MD.
Her work has also appeared in these books: Blossom II Art of Flowers, The CPSA Signature Showcase, The Best of Colored Pencil, 2 volumes; as well as American Artist Magazine and The Artist’s Magazine.
Elyse is a member of the Jackson Art Center in Washington, D.C. and the Torpedo Factory Art Association in Alexandria, VA; and she is a Signature/Merit Member of the Colored Pencil Society of America. www.elysewolf.com