The Forward Arts Foundation announced that Luke Kennard's Notes on the Sonnets won the £10,000 (about $13,610) Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection, while Caleb Femi's Poor took the £5,000 (about $6,805) Felix Dennis Prize for debut collection and Nicole Sealey's "Pages 22-29, An excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure" topped the £1,000 (about $1,360) best single poem category.
Judge Shivanee Ramlochan called Kennard's book "an extraordinary thing. It is an invitation to link contemporaneity with the very rigid way many students are forced to study Shakespeare. This book could transform that relationship in a profound, funny and moving way."
Poor is "extraordinarily powerful and lyrical," said judge Tristram Fane Saunders, adding that Femi "demonstrates a wonderful control of the sound of the line. You can open the collection on any page and read a selection aloud and you will get a 'wow' response from anyone."
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Toni Ann Johnson won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction for her collection Light Skin Gone to Waste, which will be published by the University of Georgia Press in the fall of 2022. The prize "seeks to encourage talented writers of short stories by presenting their work to a wider readership," and winners are offered publication of a book-length collection and $1,000.
Flannery O'Connor series editor Roxane Gay said: "Toni Ann Johnson's Light Skin Gone to Waste is one of the most engrossing short story collections I've read in recent memory. These interconnected stories about a black family living in a predominantly white suburb of New York City are impeccably written, incisive, often infuriating, and unforgettable. At the center of many of these stories is Philip Arrington, a psychologist who tries to reshape the world to his liking as he moves through it, regardless of the ways his actions affect the people in his intimate orbit. With a deft eye for detail, crisp writing, and an uncanny understanding of human frailties, Toni Ann Johnson has created an endlessly interesting American family portrait."
This year's runners-up were Elsewhere by Oindrila Mukherjee, Skylark by William Smith, Magdalena Is Brighter Than You Think by Grace Spulak, and The 28th Parallel by Eric Weintraub.