Now Available | Volume 19 & 2023 Chapbook
2024 Nonfiction Chapbook Prize | Mary Cappello judges
A prize of $1,000, publication of the essay in The Tusculum Review’s 2024 issue, and creation of a limited edition stand-alone chapbook with original art is awarded for the winning essay.
Final judge Mary Cappello’s seven books of literary nonfiction include a Los Angeles Times bestselling detour on awkwardness; a lyric biography; the mood fantasia, Life Breaks In; and a speculative manifesto, Lecture.
2023 Poetry Chapbook Prizewinner | Kelly Gray
Final judge Justin Phillip Reed has selected Kelly Gray’s The Mating Calls of a Specter as the winner of The Tusculum Review 2023 Poetry Chapbook Prize.
Reed praises Gray’s work:
“. . . It’s really the sensual that gets me—some restoration of faith in the body-poem union comes terrifically alive here, not the least due to the presence of damp animals, sharp instruments, bare stomachs, wafts of beer breath, truck exhaust, ‘thin femurs// jagged alps of possum teeth.’ An anxious Frankenwork. I frequently delight in feeling frightened; is that alright? I’m made to ask. Is delight an appropriate response to these images? Should one feel ‘appropriate’ when reading poetry? In a contemporary fog of content over-saturation, I can’t not advocate for cultivating this sort of self-checking trouble as a beacon of worthwhile writing.”
Reed chose Timmy Chong’s East Coast Love Poems for honorable mention:
” . . . I’m more present at than privy to a conversation that is delicious to listen to, like a death metal opera in unfamiliar idiom, a fast bike ride through a district lined by buskers playing sweet somethings. ‘I want to be known like: No, / no… I’ll try again tomorrow’ goes the deceptively straightforward (and agreeable) intro to a poem that then slides into a particle party of my favorite sounds, buzzing like a packet of Nerds candy. The experience leaves me convinced not only of ‘love language’ as more of a literal phenomenon than just a self-help phrase or meme trope, but also of the act of love as a force that transforms and expands how we can speak and, subsequently, how we can think and imagine and conspire.”
2023 Poetry Chapbook Prize submissions end Thursday, June 15
Chosen poet wins $1,000, creation of a limited edition stand-alone chapbook with original artwork, and publication in Volume 19 of The Tusculum Review. Justin Phillip Reed, author of Indecency, The Malevolent Volume, and the forthcoming With Bloom Upon Them and Also With Blood, judges.
Mubanga Kalimamukwento publishes “Pretend” in The Ex-Puritan
Kalimamukwento, winner of the 2022 Tusculum Review Poetry Chapbook Prize for unmarked graves, publishes her first nonfiction, to her sister. “Pretend” is as arresting as her poems. Our publication of her chapbook, with original illustrations by Amiah Brown, has been read across the world.
Vince Gatton, Winner of The Gary Garrison Playwriting Award for 10-Minute Plays (2023)
Gatton’s “The Oktavist” won first place in The Gary Garrison Playwriting Award for 10-Minute Plays.
His play will be performed at Tusculum University for The 5×10 Plays event in the Behan Theatre.
(Read more about Vince under Contest.)
Tusculum University Theatre Presents The 5×10 Plays
Five 10-Minute plays will be performed at Tusculum University in the Behan Theatre. Winner of The Gary Garrison Playwriting Award for 10-Minute Plays Vince Gatton will have his play “The Oktavist” performed along with runner-up Hank Kimmel’s “The End of Summer”.
Hank Kimmel, Runner-Up of The Gary Garrison Playwriting Award for 10-Minute Plays (2023)
Kimmel’s play “The End of Summer” won as runner up in The Gary Garrison Playwriting Award for 10-Minute Plays.
His play will be performed at Tusculum University for The 5×10 Plays event in the Behan Theatre.
(Read more about Hank under Contest.)
Music & Memory
The Tusculum Review hosts the winner of our 2022 Poetry Chapbook Prize, Zambian poet Mubanga Kalimamukwento, for a reading, Q&A, and reception celebrating the publication of her chapbook, unmarked graves. She describes the collection as “conversations with ghosts,” and she contemplates the loss of her closest family members to the AIDS epidemic in Zambia. Copies of the limited edition chapbook will be sold and signed. Original illustrations by artist Amiah Brown.
2022 Poetry Chapbook Prize winner Mubanga Kalimamukwento’s Chapbook Launch
Thursday, November 17 | 7 pm | Behan Theater | Tusculum University | Free and open to the public
(Illustration by Amiah Brown.)
Suphil Lee Park’s essay “An Escape Clause,” published in Volume 17 of The Tusculum Review, was recognized on the list of Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2021 in Best American Essays 2022.
Priscilla Long’s essay “After Long Silence,” published in Volume 17 of The Tusculum Review, was recognized on the list of Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2021 in Best American Essays 2022.
2022 Poetry Chapbook Prizewinner
unmarked graves
Mubanga Kalimamukwento
2022 Poetry Chapbook Prize Finalist
Puebla
Brent Amenyro
2022 Poetry Chapbook Prize Judge
Carmen Giménez
Current Issue | Volume 18