The University of Nebraska Press is happy to announce that Tomás Q. Morín will be the judge for the 2024 Backwaters Press Prize in Poetry competition. Morín is the author of the poetry collections Machete, A Larger Country, and Patient Zero. He is also the author of Where Are You From (Nebraska, 2024) and the memoir Let Me Count the Ways (Nebraska, 2022). He is the winner of the 2022 Writers’ League of Texas Nonfiction Book Award. Morín is currently on the faculty at Rice University.

Submissions will be accepted April 1 through May 1. The winner will receive $2,000 and publication of their book. For more information, click here.

The 2023 winner is Dear Wallace by Julie Choffel, which will be published in October 2024. The honorable mention is Locomotive Cathedral by Brandel France de Bravo, which will be published in the spring of 2025. Both were selected by Hilda Raz, author of Letter from a Place I’ve Never Been: New and Collected Poems, 1986-2020, edited by Kwame Dawes.

Founded in 1997, the Backwaters Press has published award-winning books by some of America’s finest writers. The University of Nebraska Press acquired the Backwaters Press in 2018, with its impressive backlist in poetry and prose that contributes to the cultural landscape of our state and region. As a general interest imprint of UNP, the Backwaters Press continues to plant its roots firmly in the Great Plains, delighting readers with literature of enduring value and consequence.

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