Matthews Poetry Prize winners announced

The winners of the 2015 2015 Matthews Poetry Prize are Matthew Wimberley from Beech Mountain, Patrick Swaney from Athens, Ohio and Debbie Benson from Atascadero, Calif. All three will read at Malaprop’s at a date to be determined.

Press release from organizers:

The editors at THE ASHEVILLE POETRY REVIEW are pleased to announce the WILLIAM MATTHEWS POETRY PRIZE RECIPIENTS for 2015. Matthew Wimberley, from Beech Mtn, NC, was awarded first prize for his poem, “All the Great Territories,” and will receive $1000, plus publication in The Asheville Poetry Review (Vol. 22, Issue 25, 2015), which will be released in November, 2015. Garrett Hongo was the final judge.

Second prize is awarded to Patrick Swaney, from Athens, OH, for his poem, “Late Fall, Late Afternoon, Late Light.”
He will receive $250, as well as publication.

Debbie Benson, from Atascadero, CA, was the third prize recipient for her poem ” Papanasam” 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, 2016. For the guidelines and more, visit: www.ashevillepoetryreview.com

Matthew Wimberley is a native of Beech Mt., NC. His chapbook “Snake Mountain Almanac” was selected by Eduardo C. Corral as the winner of the 2014 Rane Arroyo Chapbook Contest from Seven Kitchens Press. A finalist for the 2012 Narrative 30 Below Contest, his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in: The Greensboro Review, The Missouri Review, Narrative, Orion, The Paris-American, Poet Lore, Puerto Del Sol, Rattle, and Verse Daily. Wimberley received his MFA from NYU where he worked with children at St. Mary’s Hospital as a Starworks Fellow.

Patrick Swaney lives in Athens, OH, where is completing a PhD in poetry. He is the editor of Quarter After Eight. His work has appeared in Conduit, Indiana Review, NANO Fiction, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere.

Debbie Benson‘s poems have previously appeared in Mid-American Review, Best New Poets 2013, Antioch Review, Barrow Street, and other journals. She is a past recipient of the Vern Cowles Prize for a Trinity of Poems (Southeast Missouri State University Press) and the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize (Southern California Review). She currently lives in central CA, where she works at a state psychiatric hospital. She has earned an MFA in poetry from the New School, and a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Yeshiva University.