Lost Horse Press has announced the winner of the 2009 Idaho Prize for Poetry. Stephen Gibson of West Palm Beach was named the recipient of the one-thousand-dollar prize, which includes publication of his winning collection, Frescoes, by Lost Horse Press. Carolyne Wright judged.
Gibson’s most recent book of poetry is Masaccio’s Expulsion, published in 2008, which won MARGIE/IntuiT House Press’s Robert E. Lee and Ruth I. Wilson Poetry Book Award, judged by Andrew Hudgins. His debut collection, Rorschach Art, was published by Red Hen Press in 2001. Frescoes will be released in February of next year.
Two runners-up for the Idaho Prize were also named. They are John Brady for Thunder Shakes the Snake: The Poetry of Cheng Hui and Matthew Thorburn for Every Possible Blue.
The longlisted finalists are John Bensko for Fur Traders on the Missouri, Esther Lee for little lung damage, James McKean for We Are the Bus, Peter Munro for Animal Kingdom, Richard Robbins for Radioactive City, Catherine Staples for Still-Life Breathing, Joe Wilkins for Ragged Point Road, and Maya Jewell Zeller for Rust Fish.
The book prize is given annually in August, and the next deadline for manuscript submissions is May 15, 2010.