Rattle is proud to announce the winner of the first annual Rattle Chapbook Prize:
3arabi Song
Zeina Hashem Beck
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet whose first collection, To Live in Autumn (The Backwaters Press, 2014), won the 2013 Backwaters Prize. It was also runner-up for the 2014 Julie Suk Award, category finalist for the 2015 Eric Hoffer Awards, and has been included on Split This Rock’s list of recommended poetry books for 2014. Her work has been repeatedly nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, River Styx, Poetry Daily, The Common, Rattle, 32 Poems, Mslexia, Magma, and The Rialto, among others. Her poetry manuscript, Louder than Hearts, has been recently named runner-up for the 2015 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. Zeina is a strong performer of her poems, and she regularly reads at festivals, poetry events, theaters, schools, and universities around the Middle East. She lives in Dubai, where she has founded and runs the poetry and open mic collective PUNCH. (website)
Two of Zeina Hashem Beck’s poems, not included with the manuscript, have appeared in our Poets Respond series: “Ghazal: Back Home” and “Ya’aburnee.” You can also watch her perform the chapbook’s title poem, “3arabi Song,” with the Fayha Choir in Lebanon, here.
For the 2016 Rattle Chapbook Prize, we received an incredible 1,720 entries, and a great number of impressive manuscripts that deserve to be published. In order to maximize the impact of the competition, we’ve decided to also offer publication to three runners-up. 3arabi Song will be distributed to all 7,500+ subscribers along with an issue at the end of the year; one of the runners-up will also be distributed to each subscriber at random, so that everyone receives two chapbooks. All four chapbooks will be available for individual sale.
Runners-Up:
Kill the Dogs
Heather Bell
Oswego, NY
Ligatures
Denise Miller
Kalamazoo, MI
Turn Left Before Morning
April Salzano
New Castle, PA