2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winners
For the 2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize, we received over 2,500 entries, including some of the best manuscripts we’ve ever seen, but the series only allows for three winners, and we’ve chosen the following three. Each of the winning poets will receive $5,000, and their chapbooks will be distributed to all 9,000 of our print subscribers, beginning with the Fall 2025 issue of Rattle. Per the guidelines, one of the winners is a poet who had not yet published a full-length book of poetry.
Haunt Me
José Enrique Medina
Whittier, California
José Enrique Medina earned his BA in English from Cornell University. He writes poems, flash fiction and short stories. His work has appeared in Best Microfiction 2019 Anthology, The Los Angeles Review, Rattle, and many other publications. He is a Voices of Our Nation (VONA) fellow.
Backlit
Liz Robbins
St. Augustine, Florida
Liz Robbins’ fourth collection, Night Swimming, won the 2023 Cold Mountain Press Annual Book Contest. Her third, Freaked, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award, judged by Bruce Bond; her second, Play Button, won the Cider Press Review Book Award, judged by Patricia Smith. Her first is Hope, As the World Is a Scorpion Fish (U Nebraska).
The Soft Black Stars
Matthew Buckley Smith
Carrboro, North Carolina
Matthew Buckley Smith is the author of Midlife (Measure, 2024) and Dirge for an Imaginary World (Able Muse, 2012). His poems have been featured in American Life in Poetry, Best American Poetry, and Poetry Daily. He hosts the poetry podcast SLEERICKETS.