The Georgia Review congratulates Xinyue Huang, who was selected by judge Hanif Abdurraqib as the winner of the eleventh annual Loraine Williams Poetry Prize. Huang will receive $1,500 for her poem “Warm Box 暖箱.”
Explaining his choice, Abdurraqib praised the poem’s “warm and inviting” imagery and wrote that “Reading this poem felt like having a comfortable home built around you, to say nothing of its exit, an ending line that is stunning, heartbreaking, eternally memorable.”
The Georgia Review will host Huang and Abdurraqib for a reading in April 2024.
Xinyue Huang is an author and poet from Shanghai, China. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Pigeon Pages, Electric Literature, and several Chinese poetry publications. A semifinalist for the 2021 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a finalist for the 2022 Black Warrior Review Poetry Prize, Huang writes poems in both English and Chinese. Currently living in Brooklyn, she will attend the NYU MFA program in poetry this fall.
We also thank everyone who submitted to this year’s contest; the complete list of finalists can be found below. The prize is named for the late Loraine Williams, a longtime patron of the arts whose gift made it possible. For more information about the contest, please visit here. We look forward to reading work from both previous and first-time entrants when the next Loraine Williams Poetry Prize opens in March 2024.
2023 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize Winner and Finalists
Winner:
Xinyue Huang, “Warm Box 暖箱”
Finalists:
Luisa A. Igloria, “Every Feeling Has a Secret Pocket”
Sara Mae, “Panhellenic Building Blueprint”
Kanyinsola Olorunnisola, “Sekina, Viola Davis & Hattie McDaniel Make a Dadaist Film circa 1863”
El Williams III, “Chicory”
Cecilia Woloch, “Prayer for 2018”