2022 Flume Press Chapbook Winner & Runner Up
For the Compost by Stu Nolan
A collection of seventeen verdant poems, Stu Nolan’s For the Compost graces readers with naturalistic imagery and deeply personal vulnerabilities. Nolan yearns for transcendence from physicality, and asks us to consider, “When / was the last time you were / your whole self?” With rapturous diction, Nolan’s collection blurs the binaries of machine and flesh, while holding the scalpel that separates them.
From our contest judge, José Antonio Rodríguez: “How do you language a self into being?” asks the speaker of these poems early on and then offers the reader a courageous attempt suffused with grace. This collection, an investigation of queer identity, looks to the ever-evolving quality of the natural world as an evocative metaphor. Rich with imagery and sound, its pensive and probing voice questions the relationship between the corporeal self and identity, seeking metamorphosis and investigating its parameters. The body or, as the poet calls it here, “borrowed atoms,” dances at the center of this lovely collection.
Stu Nolan is a queer writer and aspiring documentary filmmaker based in the mountain buttes and basin brine of Salt Lake City. They have a love for growing things, going on tangents, and exchanging stories with with strangers. Their work has been published in Scribendi, GirlsRightTheWorld, Arcturus Magazine, Leopardskin&Limes, and by Torrey House Press. They are working on starting a podcast and dream of being in a punk band. For the Compost is Nolan’s first published chapbook
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Alive, Today, Again! Poems and Lyric Essays from the Middlelands by Kimberly Ramos
Alive, Today, Again! Poems and Lyric Essays from the Middlelands dazzles and bites through Kimberly Ramos’ experiences of the past, present, and future in rural America. Interspersed with moments of tenderness, fear, and desperation, Alive, Today. Again! is a stand-out hybrid collection that supersedes borders and explores the Asian American identity in Kimberly Ramos’s cinching, unmistakable voice.
From our contest judge, José Antonio Rodríguez: “Sometimes lyric essay, sometimes prose poem, sometimes verse, this collection plays with form to imagine the histories of white and Asian that shaped the biracial speaker’s sense of place and displacement. In referencing Filipino folklore, American pop culture, and family history, the poems here reach out as both celebration and inquiry. In the penultimate poem, the speaker imagines herself fossilized and then unearthed in the distant future, thus rising above the particulars to offer the reader an expansive view of the relationship between the individual and the imagined community.”
Kimberly Ramos is a rabbit in giant’s clothing. They are continually pulled back to their birthplace in Southern Missouri, though they currently reside in Providence, Rhode Island, as a graduate student of philosophy at Brown University. Before pursuing their PhD, they earned a BA in Philosophy and a BFA in Creative Writing from Truman State University. They are also the author of the chapbook The Beginner’s Guide to Minor Gods and Other Small Spirits published by Unsolicited Press. They served as the Managing Editor of the 2022-2023 lineup of CLASH!, an Imprint of Mouthfeel Press. They dream of becoming a cryptid and haunting the Midwest.
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2021 Flume Press Chapbook Winners
Grandma June by Mara Beneway
Dreamlike and deeply moving, Grandma June, a collection of connected stories, is a portal into the otherworldly life shared by the titular character and her granddaughter. The two navigate a rich world of natural beauty and persistence in the face of great loss. This chapbook includes original illustrations by the author.
Mara Beneway is a writer, visual artist, and teacher from New York. Her work has appeared in Foglifter, Bodega Magazine, Hobart, Vagabond City, Bread Loaf Journal, and elsewhere. She is currently a graduate student studying Creative Writing at the University of South Florida and English Literature at the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English.
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Sixteen Stories by Jeff Whitney
Improvisational. Imaginal. A bestiary of familial revision and dark hope, Sixteen Stories is a collection of poems that challenges our commonplace understanding of narrative, of fable, and the potential healing found in new ways of telling.
Jeff Whitney is the author of several chapbooks, most recently Sixteen Stories (Flume Press, 2022). With Philip Schaefer, he co-authored Radio Silence (Black Lawrence Press, 2016), winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition. His poems can be found in 32 Poems, Adroit, Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and Sixth Finch. He volunteers as a reader for Black Lawrence Press, and has served on the staff for CutBank literary magazine. He lives in Portland.
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