Winners have been named for the 12th annual Firecracker Awards, celebrating "the best of independently published literature" in books and magazines and sponsored by the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses. Each book winner receives $2,000--$1,000 for the press and $1,000 for the author.
The book winners:
Fiction: Blood Work and Other Stories by Donald A. Carreira Ching (Bamboo Ridge Press). The judges commented: "Rarely is a collection written with such veracity and unwavering resolution. Blood Work and Other Stories delves into the contemporary lives of Hawaiians as they navigate grief, housing instability, and questions of belonging. These seventeen masterfully crafted stories are ones of grit, loss, and sorrow, while also erupting off the page with the unexpected splendor of pÅhinahina growing in an ABC Store parking lot. They remind us that despite climate change and development, gentrification and intergenerational trauma, Hawai'i is a place of enduring beauty and strength. Donald A. Carreira Ching has written a marvel of a book that commands our attention and obedience."
Creative Nonfiction: Governing Bodies: A Memoir, A Confluence, A Watershed by Sangamithra Iyer (Milkweed Editions). "Governing Bodies: A Memoir, A Confluence, A Watershed weaves together research and personal narrative in a genre-blurring work that is both a memoir and an argument. Within it, Sangamithra Iyer builds bridges between the different aspects of her identity, between humans and animals, between the past and the present. She writes to seek truth and reckon with grief. Iyer challenges us to have more compassion and empathy/sympathy for all living things, to think in a thoughtless world, and to feel when the world tries to numb us. The book is indeed a confluence, and one that offers a model to other writers who live intersectional lives and write intersectional stories that hold both the personal and the political. Governing Bodies is a stunning book, both in content as well as form, with a cover and table of contents whose designs are just as thoughtful as the words within."
Poetry: The Choreic Period: Poems by Latif Askia Ba (Milkweed Editions). "The Choreic Period is a striking contribution to contemporary disability poetics, challenging ableist reading habits and expanding what poetic accessibility and difficulty can mean. We were moved by its pared-down nature, its illustration of the relationship between syntax and disability, and its innovative formal elements, including interruptive punctuation, staccato lineation, multilingual code-switching, and deliberate difficulty. Its force and voice made this conceptually sharp, powerfully embodied book a clear choice for the Firecracker Poetry Award."