Experimental Feminist Poetics Since 1974
2025 QTBIPOC Prize Winners & Finalists
Our judge, Andrea Abi-Karam selected The Refusal to Land by Yanis Iqbal as the winner of the 2025 QTBIPOC Book Prize. The editors have also chosen to publish Counterpoint by Jasmine An as the Editors’ Choice Award this year.
We also want to give a special spotlight to the following manuscripts below:
FINALISTS
Language We Fall Through by Jai Dulani
Poemuit by Shantell Powell
Gulf of Treason by Sophia Terazawa
SEMIFINALISTS

the present is a small child by Nefertiti Asanti
GIDDY HEAVEN by Michael Chang
God Forgot to Name This Place by Michael Emerald
Allah Forgive Us by Maryam Ghafoor
Grief Is Shaped Like A Binder by Gabriel Jayroe
Green Card by Jeddie Sophronius
To Salazar & Back by Oswaldo Vargas
A Capricious God by Waverly Vernon
Trans-Electronic Music by Sydney Westley
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Thank you for the opportunity to consider your poetry manuscript for the Book Prize.
2023 QTBIPOC Prize
Congratulations Jennifer Perrine for Beautiful Outlaw
Judge and editor Ching-In Chen says, "I loved the urgent energy and movement of the language and the questions of this book around how we contend with violence in many forms – and found myself returning to the pages again and again.” Kelsey Street Press is proud to be bringing this manuscript into the world.
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Jennifer (JP) Perrine is the author of four books of poetry: Again, The Body Is No Machine, In the Human Zoo, and No Confession, No Mass. Their latest poems and essays appear in Five Minutes, The Maine Review, Cincinnati Review, Pleiades, Nimrod, New Letters, Poetry Northwest, Orion Magazine, Harpur Palate, Oregon Humanities, Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry, and Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, and Poetry. Their recent work has been recognized through the Arts and Culture Diversity and Inclusion Award from the Asian American Journalists Association, an Oregon Humanities Community Storytelling Fellowship, an Arts3C grant and a Make | Learn | Build grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, the Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize, and residencies at Caldera Arts Center and the Independent Publishing Resource Center. Perrine lives in Portland, Oregon, where they cohost the Incite: Queer Writers Read series, teach writing, and work as the equity and racial justice program manager with the regional parks and nature department.
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​We also wanted to congratulate the following finalists:
Counterpoint by Jasmine An
Imagined Child by LM Brimmer
water:way by ayana harsoet
Surviving Fire by ena ganguly
Poemuit by Shantell Powell
Hard Crush by Sarah Yanni
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Thank you to everyone who sent us their work to the 2023 QTBIPOC Prize! We were so excited to read so much urgent and beautiful writing.
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Mihee Kim's Nomenclature was selected as the winner of Kelsey Street Press's inaugural QTBIPOC Book Contest, a free contest open to QTBIPOC-identified poets. Mihee's winning manuscript was chosen by juror Metta Sáma, author of Swing at your own risk (Kelsey Street Press, 2019), out of a submission pool of 120 manuscripts.
Sáma says of Nomenclature: "the line holds power in these poems; the impulse is the story; the stylistic experiment is about the shape of story, the complicity of language in building story through shape, through prose."
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Thank you to all who submitted to the prize, and congratulations to the finalists: jayy dodd, Jai Dulani, Vuyelwa Malulek, Ansley Moon, Maggie Rhee, and Ximena Keogh Serrano.
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Due to a mutual agreement between author and press, Kelsey Street Press will not be publishing the book. We thank Metta Sama for judging and Ching-In Chen for editing the manuscript. Thank you to all who submitted such impressive and amazing work – and we encourage you all to re-submit.