The University of Nebraska Press is proud to announce the winner of the Backwaters Press Prize in Poetry for 2025: Sanam Sheriff and their manuscript Humہم. 

“Books are among the most sacred gifts I’ve received from the people I love. To now be publishing my debut poetry collection—to be given the chance to make a book that may accompany someone across the distances of our lives—is, to me, a tangible form of faith,” said Sheriff. “I’m humbled, excited, scared, and honored to bring Humہم into the world with the University of Nebraska Press. It is a book I have been working on for several years, and it is with immense gratitude that I set out on the journey of placing it in people’s hands.”

Sanam Sheriff is a poet, performer, and educator from Bangalore, India. For the past three years, they have served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College. Most recently, they curate The Poets’ Studio with Twelve Gates Arts in Philadelphia.

Sheriff will be awarded $2,000 for their winning collection and it will be published in the fall of 2026.  

The judge this year was Maggie Smith, the New York Times bestselling author of eight books of poetry and prose, including You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, Goldenrod, Keep Moving, and My Thoughts Have Wings. Her new book is Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life which draws from her twenty years of teaching experience and her craft-focused Substack newsletter, For Dear Life.

“Daring, inventive, and deeply human, ہم Hum helped restore my faith in what imagination and language can do, even as those in power work to corrode both,” said Smith. “This is a book I needed to read by a poet I feel fortunate to be living alongside.”

The honorable mention winner is Elizabeth Barnett. She will be awarded $1,000 and her manuscript, The Law at Night, will be published in the spring of 2027.  

Of The Law at Night, Smith said: “These poems astonished me, page after page, with their compression, tone, and compelling turns in such tight spaces. I’ve never read a book like The Law at Night. I didn’t want it to end.”

 

Elizabeth Barnett lives with her family in San Antonio, home of the Alamo, and teaches at Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, home of the world’s largest pecan. A poet and critic writing a literary biography of James Marshall, her work has appeared in journals including Modernism/modernity, Gulf Coast, and AGNI.

“I’m giddy that Maggie Smith chose this book and that Backwaters Press and University of Nebraska Press are publishing it,” said Barnett.

The 2024 Backwaters Prize winner was Kimberly Ann Priest. Her winning collection Wolves in Shells will publish in October 2025.  

The University of Nebraska Press acquired the Backwaters Press in 2018 and continues its yearly poetry prize.