For the 2019 Rattle Chapbook Prize, we received 1,404 entries, and far more wonderful manuscripts than we have space to publish. We’re excited to announced three winners this year. Each poet will receive $2,000, and each of their chapbooks will be distributed to all 7,000 of our subscribers, beginning with the Fall 2019 issue of Rattle.
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~ Fall 2019 ~
Hansel and Gretel Get the Word on the Street
Al Ortolani
Lenexa, Kansas
Al Ortolani’s prose and poetry has appeared in Rattle, New Letters, the New York Quarterly, The Midwest Quarterly, The English Journal, The Quarterly, The Laurel Review, Prairie Schooner, Word Riot, Camroc Press Review, and others. He is the author of one chapbook and seven books of poetry, most recently Waving Mustard in Surrender and Paper Birds Don’t Fly, both from New York Quarterly Books. (web)
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~ Winter 2019 ~
The Last Mastodon
Christina Olson
Statesboro, Georgia
Christina Olson is the author of the books Terminal Human Velocity and Before I Came Home Naked, as well as the chapbooks Weird Science and Rook & M.E. Her poetry and nonfiction has appeared in magazines and journals including Arts & Letters, The Best Creative Nonfiction Volume Three, Black Warrior Review, Brevity, Cream City Review, Eclipse, Folio, Gargoyle, Gastronomica, Gulf Coast, H-ngm-n, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Ledge, Mid-American Review, Midwestern Gothic, The Normal School, Passages North, Puerto del Sol, Red Rock Review, Rhino, Sou’wester, Spoon River Poetry Review, VQR, Wake: Great Lakes Thought and Culture, and Water-Stone Review. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia. (web)
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~ Spring 2020 ~
Falling off the Empire State Building
Jimmy Pappas
Chichester, New Hampshire
Jimmy Pappas served for the Air Force during the Vietnam War as an English language instructor training South Vietnamese soldiers. He received a Bachelor’s of Arts degree from Bridgewater State University and a Master’s in English literature from Rivier University. Jimmy is a retired teacher whose poems have been published in many journals, including Yellowchair Review, New Verse News, Shot Glass Journal, Kentucky Review, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Off the Coast, Boston Literary Magazine, The Ghazal Page, and War, Literature and the Arts. His poem “Bobby’s Story” was winner of the 2018 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award. He is a member of the Executive Board of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire.