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Results of the 2019 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York


AUGUST 14, 2019    |    CONTEST RESULTS





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The editors of Southern Humanities Review are proud to announce the results of our sixth annual poetry contest honoring the late Jake Adam York, award-winning poet and alumnus of Auburn University’s creative writing program. This year’s final judge—celebrated poet Vievee Francis—selected our winner. The winner and finalists will appear together in Volume 52.3, which will be published in the Fall of 2019. Honorable Mentions will be published in a special online feature in October 2019.

The poems and poets honored this year are preceded by an outstanding collection of work from our 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 Auburn Witness Poetry Prizes. Learn more about Jake Adam York, our prize, and past winners here.


Dante Di Stefano

for his poem “Burning Churches”

Dante Di Stefano is the author of Ill Angels and Love Is a Stone Endlessly in Flight. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in American Life in Poetry, Best American Poetry 2018, Poem-a-Day, Prairie Schooner, the Sewanee Review, the Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. Along with María Isabel Álvarez, he co-edited the anthology Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump’s America. He holds a PhD in English Literature from Binghamton University and is the poetry editor for the DIALOGIST. He lives in upstate New York with his wife, Christina, their daughter, Luciana, and their dog, Sunny.

OUR WINNER RECEIVES $1,000 AND WILL TRAVEL TO AUBURN UNIVERSITY IN OCTOBER 2019 TO READ AT A POETRY EVENT FEATURING CONTEST JUDGE VIEVEE FRANCIS.



Allison Adair   “Near Miss”
Jubi Arriola-Headley   “Transubstantiation”
Susan Cohen   “A Different Alphabet”
Michael Torres   “All-American Mexican”


OUR FINALISTS WILL HAVE THEIR WORK PUBLISHED IN ISSUE 52.3 ALONGSIDE THE CONTEST'S WINNER.



Mary Angelino   “Before the Hospital”
BJ Buckley   “Killing Floor”
Ann Fisher-Wirth   “at the mississippi civil rights museum”
Tatiana M.R. Johnson   “Way of the World”
Matthew Wimberley   “Daffodils Before Spring”


OUR HONORABLE MENTIONS WILL HAVE THEIR WORK PUBLISHED ONLINE IN OCTOBER IN A SPECIAL POETRY FEATURE.


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