Michigan Quarterly Review has published terrific poetry, short fiction, and essays in our print pages this year, and we’d like to extend hearty congratulations to our nominees for the 2015 Pushcart Prize.
POETRY
Diane Seuss, “Bowl” from MQR 54:2 (Spring 2015)
Seuss’s most recent collection, Four-Legged Girl, was released in October 2015 by Graywolf Press. Her book Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open won the Juniper Prize and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2010. A poem that originally appeared in Blackbird received a 2013 Pushcart Prize, and her poem “Free Beer,” originally published in the Missouri Review, appeared in The Best American Poetry 2014. Seuss is writer-in-residence at Kalamazoo College, in Michigan. Follow her on Twitter @dlseuss.
Danez Smith, “A History of Violence in the Hood,” from MQR 54:3 (Summer 2015)
Smith is the author of [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, & Don’t Call Us Dead, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2017. He is also the author of two chapbooks, hands on your knees (Penmanship Books, 2013) and black movie (Button Poetry, 2015), winner of the Button Poetry Prize. His writing has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Blavity, Buzzfeed, Narrative, Ploughshares, and Poetry. He was the recipient of a 2014 Ruth Lilly/Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and is a Cave Canem, VONA, and McKnight Foundation Fellow in addition to being featured in the Academy of American Poets’ Emerging Poets Series. He is an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan. Find out more at danezsmithpoet.com or follow him on Twitter @Danez_Smif.
FICTION
Paige Cooper, “Preoccupants,” from MQR 54:3 (Summer 2015)
Cooper won honorable mention in Gulf Coast’s 2015 Fiction Prize. Stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Briarpatch, The Fiddlehead, The Incongruous Quarterly, and Matrix. She holds a BFA from the University of British Columbia and has participated in workshops at Bread Loaf and the Banff Centre. In 2012 she was writer-in-residence at NOASS Arts and Culture Project in Riga, Latvia. She lives in Montreal, where she works as a librarian at a record label. Follow her on Twitter @paigesaracooper.
Alyson Hagy, “Switchback” from MQR 54:2 (Spring 2015)
Hagy is the author of Boleto (Graywolf Press, 2012); Ghosts of Wyoming (Graywolf Press, 2010); Snow, Ashes (Graywolf Press, 2007); Keeneland (Simon & Schuster, 2000); Graveyard of the Atlantic (Graywolf Press, 2000); Hardware River (Poseidon Press, 1991); Madonna on Her Back (Stuart Wright, 1986). She has been the recipient of an NEA Fellowship, a Christopher Isherwood Foundation Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, the High Plains Book Award for Fiction, the Devil’s Kitchen Award in Prose, a Nelson Algren Award, a Hopwood Award from the University of Michigan, and her work has been featured in Best American Short Stories. She lives in Laramie and teaches at the University of Wyoming.
ESSAYS
Laura Glen Louis, “Blissfully Unaware of Threat: On Reading Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms,” from MQR 54:2 (Spring 2015)
Louis is the author of Talking in the Dark, a Barnes & Noble Discover book, and Some, like elephants, a chapbook of elegiac poetry. She’s had work anthologized in Best American Short Stories and sings with Chora Nova and North Star Vocal Artists. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, and lives on the West Coast. Find out more at lauraglenlouis.com.
Hasanthika Sirisena, “Confessions of a Dark Tourist,” MQR 54:3, (Summer 2015)
Sirisena’s essays and stories have appeared in The Globe and Mail, WSQ, Narrative, The Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, Epoch, StoryQuarterly, Narrative and other magazines. Her work has been anthologized in Best New American Voices, and named a notable story by Best American Short Stories in 2011 and 2012. She is a recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. In 2008 she received a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award. She is currently an associate fiction editor at West Branch magazine and teaches creative writing at the City College of New York and for Gotham Writer’s Workshop. She is the winner of the 2015 Juniper Prize for Fiction. Her short story collection, The Other One, will be published in early 2016. Find out more at hasanthikasirisena.com.
Image: Botero, Fernando. “Dancing in Colombia.” 1980. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
