2025 Poetry Chapbook Prize Longlist
The Headlight Review is proud to announce the longlist for its annual Poetry Chapbook Prize. Out of over seventy submissions, the following submissions were selected to move forward in the review process:
A Mo(u)rning of Youth by Shahryar Eskandari Zanjani
ab origine by Brendan Todt
All Our (Un)Makings by Ali Beheler
An Angel and Other Poems by Christina Hauck
At the Jewish Deli and Other Poems by Emma Wyn
Chinaberry Constellations: Odes by Van Garrett
Feminine Morbidity by Maya Williams
Heart Skin by Mary Elle Talley
Hot Flash by Elizabeth Cohen
Missing Woman by Morrow Dowdle
On a Saturday in the Anthropocene by Elizabeth Coleman
Our Use of the Stars by Jed Meyers
Point of Incision by Jodi Balas
Quivering in the Bright by Christina Frei
Self-Portrait with LSD & Mirror by M Ezra Zhang
The Naming of Things by Mark Joshua
The Wild Garlic Manifesto by Martin Settle
The World is Ending & I’m Crying in the Taco Bell Parking Lot by Sarah Mills
Urchin to My Shell by Kristy Snedden
Waiting Room by Gary Stein
Finalists will be announced April 30, and their submissions will be sent to this year’s judge, Olatunde Osinaike.
Originally from the West Side of Chicago, Osinaike is a Nigerian-American poet, essayist, and software developer. Selected in 2024 as the Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry, he is the author of Tender Headed (Akashic Books), winner of the 2022 National Poetry Series, shortlisted for the Society of Midland Authors Award in Poetry and Nossrat Yassini Poetry Prize.
He is also author of the limited-edition chapbooks Speech Therapy (TAR) and The New Knew (Thirty West). Other honors include winner of the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize and Frontier Industry Prize, semifinalist for the Discovery Poetry Prize, and honorable mention for the Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Award in Poetry.
His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Literary Hub, The Slowdown, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best New Poets, 20.35 Africa, New Poetry from the Midwest, Obsidian, Wildness, and elsewhere.
