2025 Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award
The Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award is given to the best book of poems published by a Wisconsin writer in the contest year. Only works of 48 pages or more of poetry are eligible for the Meudt Poetry Book Award. See full contest guidelines.
- First Place: $1000 award and five-day stay at Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point, WI ($895 value)
- Honorable Mention: $100 and a five-day stay at Ernest Hüpeden's Painted Forest in Valton, WI ($800 value)
Judge: Cortney Lamar Charleston
Winner: Fablemaker by Mandy Moe Pwint Tu
Honorable Mention: Joy Is My Middle Name by Sasha Debevec-McKenney
About the award's namesake:
Edna Meudt [pronounced MITE] (1906-1989) was born on a farm in Wyoming Valley and lived most of her life on a farm near Dodgeville. She was a teacher, lecturer, editor, and writer who published six books of poetry and two plays. She taught poetry at Rhinelander School of Arts for 18 years and was a co-founder of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, as well as president of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Widely published in magazines, she edited The Country Poet and a series of anthologies, An Upland Reader I, II, and III. Among her books are the much-lauded Round River Canticle, The Ineluctable Sea (which won the National League of American Pen Women prize in 1976), Plain Chant for a Tree, and her autobiography, The Rose Jar (1990).
Previous Winners
2024
First Place: The Other Altar (University Press of Colorado) by Nicholas Gulig (Fort Atkinson)
Honorable Mention: Asterism (Tupelo Press) by Ae Hee Lee (Kenosha)
2023
Auction (University of Pittsburgh Press) by Quan Barry (Madison)
Honorable Mention: Discipline Park (Wendy’s Subway), Toby Altman (Madison)
2022
Durable Goods (Véhicule Press/Signal Editions) by James Pollock, Madison, WI
Honorable Mention: Jordemoder: Poems of a Midwife (Holy Cow! Press) by Ingrid Andersson, Madison, WI
2021
Hello There (Word Poetry) by Dewitt Clinton
Honorable Mention: Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems by Margaret Rozga, Milwaukee