2017 Matthews Poetry Prize winners announced

Press release:

The editors at THE ASHEVILLE POETRY REVIEW are pleased to announce the WILLIAM MATTHEWS POETRY PRIZE RECIPIENTS for 2017.
Jared Harel, from Rego Park, NY, was awarded first prize for his poem, “You Want It Darker,” and will receive $1000, plus publication in
The Asheville Poetry Review (Vol. 24, Issue 27, 2017), which will be released in December, 2017. Cornelius Eady was the final judge.

Second prize is awarded to Sarah Gordon, from Athens, GA, for her poem, “The Last American Tour, 1953.” She will receive $250, as
well as publication.

Chelsea Woodard, from New Hampton, NH, was the third prize recipient for her poem “Wren’s Nest,” and she will also be published
in our next issue. All three authors will be featured at a reading in Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville, NC this summer.

The next reading period for the William Matthews Poetry Prize is from September 15-January 15, 2018. For the guidelines and more,
visit: www.ashevillepoetryreview.com The final judge for 2018 is Alfred Corn.

Jared Harél was awarded the 2015 Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review. Additionally, his poems have
appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Ecotone, EPOCH, Massachusetts Review, Newtown Literary, The Southern Review,
The Threepenny Review and Tin House. His narrative long-poem, “The Body Double,” was published by Brooklyn Arts Press. Harél
teaches writing at Nassau Community College and lives in Queens, NY with his wife and two kids.

Sarah Gordon’s poetry has appeared in a number of publications, including, most recently, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, Southern
Poetry Review, Confrontation, Arts & Letters, and Christianity and Literature. Her collection, Distances, appeared from Brito & Lair in
1999. She is founding editor of the Flannery O’Connor Review and author of Flannery O’Connor: The Obedient Imagination (UGA Press,
2000) and A Literary Guide to Flannery O’Connor’s Georgia (UGA Press, 2008).

Chelsea Woodard’s first collection, Vellum, was published by Able Muse Press in 2014, and was a finalist for the Able Muse Book Award.
Her second collection, Solitary Bee, was published by Measure Press last October. Her poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review,
Southwest Review, Blackbird, American Arts Quarterly, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She currently lives and teaches in New Hampshire.