2026 Alice James Award Winner Announced

March 13, 2026

Photo by Cheryl McGraw.

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the Alice James Award is Anna Maria Hong, for her manuscript, Dispellations.

Anna Maria will receive $2,000 and her collection will be published in September 2028. She is the author of the poetry collections Age of Glass, winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Poetry Competition, and Fablesque, winner of Tupelo Press’s Berkshire Prize, and the novella H & G, winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Clarissa Dalloway Prize.

Her poetry, fiction, and essays appear in The Nation, The Iowa Review, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Massachusetts Review, The Austin Chronicle, Southwest Review, The Stranger, The International Examiner, The Hopkins Review, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, Poem-a-Day, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Fire on Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry, 250 Poems, The American Sonnet: An Anthology of Poems and Essays, Best New Poets,The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. A recipient of fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Amy Clampitt Poet Residency, the Hawthornden Foundation, Fundación Valparaíso, and the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation, she is an Associate Professor at Mount Holyoke College. https://www.annamariahong.net/

Finalists for the award were: Inventions of Farewell by Eric Pankey, The Other Boy by Andy Eaton, Old Dominion by Suzannah Russ Spaar, A Girl Ago by Emily Pittinos, KAMA'ĀINA by Eliana Reeves, Infinite Tongue by ire'ne silva, Of Fish & Country by Stephanie Glazier, Employment History (Partial) by Sera Gamble, Eclipse Season by Karin Gottshall, Rebewilderment by Alix Anne Shaw, The Leper Trilogy by Paula DiTallo, Daughterline by Shlagha Borah, not this by Josh English, Whatever We Become by Arah Ko, Strange and Constant by Max Schleicher, What You've Been Waiting For by Cara Dees, Future Epitaph by Leila Farjami, Cartography of Blue by Gabriel Fine, What I Learned About Dogs in the Village by Ajla Dizdarevic, and 목 | mok by Eric Baker.

Thank you to everyone who submitted their manuscript to this year’s award and to our editorial board members Stacy Gnall, Karan Kapoor, Laura Kasischke, Lucia LoTempio, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, Matthew Nienow, Kristin Robertson, Ira Sadoff, Carey Salerno, and Lisa Sewell. We’re grateful for the interest in and support of Alice James Books.