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2015 Balcones Poetry Prize awarded to What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford (Copper Canyon Press), edited by Michael Wiegers

Frank Stanford
Frank Stanford, 1973

Frank Stanford was born in August 1948 and died by his own hand in June 1978. Yet in his short life he produced an astonishing amount of poetry—the present volume contains more than 700 pages of verse. Stanford’s poetry was published in literary journals and small presses and has remained obscure, although he has had potent influence on those who know his work.

Born in Mississippi, Stanford grew up in Memphis and Arkansas, attending the University of Arkansas, and lived in Missouri and New Orleans as well. He published seven books of poetry during his life, including The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, a passionate yet carefully crafted outpouring of over 15,000 lines.





Michael Wiegers
Michael Wiegers at the Sewanee Writers Conference, 2014.

Of Stanford’s poetry, the judges said, “Frank Stanford wrote as fiercely as he lived. He is a master storyteller, and his images from rural Arkansas never fail to surprise.” His “poems seem to be written by someone very old, someone or something who has lived and thought and suffered…as old as the earth itself, and as wise, and as deadly. Yet the poems never seem dated or archaic.” His “work is distinctly Southern, distinctly rural, yet…crafted with such mastery as to transcend regionalism. The soul, the voice of these poems, is simultaneously his own, and yet universal.”

Michael Wiegers is poetry editor of Narrative Magazine and executive editor of Copper Canyon Press. His previous titles include This Art, The Poet’s Child and Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (co-edited with Monica de la Torre).

Four finalists were also named:

  • Forest Primeval, Vievee Francis (TriQuarterly Books)
  • Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, Ross Gay (University of Pittsburgh Press)
  • Lighting the Shadow, Rachel Eliza Griffiths (Four Way Books)
  • Crow-Work, Eric Pankey (Milkweed Editions)

The judges for the 2015 prize were Joseph Ahearn, a poet and professor at Austin Community College; Ken Fontenot, a poet and novelist who lives in Austin; and Allyson Whipple, a poet and professor at Austin Community College.

Former winners of the Balcones Poetry Prize:

  • Once in the West, Michael Wiman, 2014
  • Interrobang, Jessica Piazza, 2013
  • When My Brother Was an Aztec, Natalie Diaz, 2012
  • Bone Fires, Mark Jarmon, 2011
  • Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been, Chase Twichell, 2010
  • Portrait and Dream, Bill Berkson, 2009
  • Dismantling the Hills, Michael McGriff, 2008
  • At the Drive-In Volcano, Aimee Nezhukumatahil, 2007
  • Drive, Lorna Dee Cervantes, 2006
  • No Accident, Aaron Anstett, 2005
  • Dancing on Main Street, Lorenzo Thomas, 2004
  • Bread Without Sorrow, John Hogden, 2002
  • Short History of Pets, Carol Potter, 2001
  • In the Surgical Theatre, Dana Levin, 2000
  • The Red-Shifting Web, Arthur Sze, 1999
  • Sparrow: New and Selected Poems, Reginald Gibbons, 1997
  • The Body Mutinies, Lucia Perillo, 1996
  • Every Substance Clothed, Kathleen Halme, 1995

Nominations for the 2016 prize will be accepted from Septemer 1, 2016 to January 31, 2017.

For more information: John Herndon, Austin Community College, 1212 Rio Grande Street, Austin, Texas 78701. jherndon@austincc.edu, sites.austincc.edu/crw.

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2015 Balcones Fiction Prize awarded to People Like You (Atelier26 Books), a short story collection by Margaret Malone

In Margaret Malone’s debut story collection People Like You, characters in the thick of everyday experience absent of epiphanies, are caught off-guard or cast adrift by personal impulses even while wide awake to their own imperfections.

Malone’s writing has appeared in The Missouri Review, Oregon Humanities Magazine, Coal City Review, Propeller Quarterly, The Timberline Review, Swink, Nailed and latimes.com. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission and Literary Arts, two Regional Arts & Culture Council Project Grants, and residencies at The Sitka Center and Soapstone. Malone has a degree in Philosophy from Humboldt State University and has taught creative writing as a visiting artist at Pacific Northwest College of Art. She lives with her husband filmmaker Brian Padian and two children in Portland, where she co-hosts the artist and literary gathering SHARE.

Margaret Malone
Margaret Malone. Photo by Sabina Poole.

Final judge John Blair called the book “a masterfully minimalist collection of lives lived poorly but with the best of intentions.  Her stories are powerful, sad, and plain-spoken, and this debut collection takes the normative-yet-desperate circuits of the day-to-day that Bobbie Anne Mason and Frederick Barthelme brought to the forefront of American short fiction and makes them both new again and powerfully affecting.  These are marvelous and worthy stories, and very much deserving of recognition.”

Six finalists were also named:

  • Aftermath Lounge by Margaret McMullan (Calypso Editions)
  • Between You and Me by Scott Nadelson (Engine Books)
  • Girl Power by Katie Cortese (ELJ Editions)
  • Engels by Gavin McCrea (Catapult)
  • Nonprofit by Matt Burriesci (New Issues)
  • Wilberforce by H.S. Cross (FSG)

Former winners of the Balcones Fiction Prize:

  • Hold the Dark by William Giraldi, 2014
  • Girls I Know by Douglas Trevor, 2013
  • We Sinners by Hanna Pylvainen, 2012
  • Send Me Work by Katherine Karlin, 2011
  • Love Like Hate by Linh Dinh, 2010

Nominations for the 2016 Balcones Fiction Prize will be accepted from September 1, 2016 to January 31, 2017.

For more information: Joe O’Connell, Austin Community College, 1212 Rio Grande Street, Austin, Texas 78701. joconne@austincc.edu, sites.austincc.edu/crw.