This summer our Managing Editor Amber Allen has put together a series of weekly recommended reading lists. Contributors include CSU staff, students, authors, and friends. First up is Siwar Masannat, whose book 50 Water Dreams won the CSU Poetry Center's 2014 First Book Competition.

Siwar recommends:

Books:

Textu by Fady Joudah
Copper Canyon Press, 2014

Sand Opera by Philip Metres
Alice James Books, 2015

Western Practice by Stephen Motika
Alice James Books, 2012

& Chapbooks:

This is the One that Snowfalls You, That You Snowfall Out Of by Daniel D’Angelo
Outta Ink Press, 2015

The White Dog Year by Caitlin Scarano
dancing girl press & studio, 2015

and nevermind the storm by Soham Patel
Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs, 2012

Cleveland State University Poetry Center
2014 First Book and Open Book Competition Results

We're happy to re-post the results of last year's CSU Poetry Center Book Competitions. All three books will be published this spring!

Winner of the 2014 First Book Competition (selected by Ilya Kaminsky): Siwar Masannat: 50 Water Dreams

Siwar Masannat is an Arab writer from Amman, Jordan. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry from George Mason University and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Siwar co-founded Gazing Grain Press, a chapbook publisher open to feminists of every gender and sexuality. Her poems and articles have appeared in Denver Quarterly, VOLT, Gargoyle, and 7iber.me, among others.

Winner of the 2014 Open Book Competition
(selected by Erin Belieu): Lee Upton: Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles

Lee Upton is the author of The Tao of Humiliation: Stories, the essay collection Swallowing the Sea: On Writing & Ambition Boredom Purity & Secrecy; the novella The Guide to the Flying Island; and a fifth collection of poetry, Undid in the Land of Undone. She is a professor of English and the writer-in-residence at Lafayette College.

Editor’s Choice (selected by CSU PC Director, Caryl Pagel):
Broc Rossell: Festival

Broc Rossell is from California and lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he teaches creative writing, literature, and courses in culture and theory for the English and Humanities departments at Simon Fraser University.

We would also like to recognize and congratulate the following finalists:

First Book Runners-Up:

Justin Boening: Where Are We Riding To, Master
Stella Corso: Eat Island
Carolina Ebeid: You Ask Me To Talk About The Interior
Caroline Knapp: Auricle
Diana Khoi Nguyen: Ghost Of
Stephen Priest: Why We Don’t Say What We Want
Martin Rock: Residuum
Jay Thompson: Full Gone
Colin Winnette: The Animals

First Book Finalists:

Jose Alvergue: precis
Jeff Baker: Whoop & Shush
Melissa Barrett: Cold Holy Voice
Thea Brown: Think of the Danger
Dana Curtis: Wave Particle Duality
Adam Davis: Index of Haunted Houses
Erik Ekstrand: Laodicea
Dennis Etzel Jr.: My Secret Wars of 1984
Kristin George Bagdanov: Being a Body
Evan Harrison: Bad Faith
Katie Hartsock: Wild Papyri
Christopher Kang: Autodiary
Eunsong Kim: Performance for Debt
Matthew Minicucci: Aristeia
Ayaz Pirani: Girl Without Limbs
Matt Reeck: Wunderkammer!
Nicholas Regiacorte: Machigonne
Anji Reyner: The Sunshine Grudge
Lisa Wells: The Resurrections

Open Book Finalists:

Aaron Apps: Queer Fat
Carrie Bennett: The Land is a Painted Thing
Denise Bergman: Three Hands None
Laurie Blauner: A Theory for What Just Happened
James Capozzi: Layman’s Atlas
Daniel Coudriet: The Lost Parade
Adam Crittenden: Field Spectrum
Shira Dentz: how do I net thee
Noah Falck: Exclusions
Carmen Gillespie: The Blue Black Wet of Wood
Andrew Grace: Of Dust
Brandi Homan: Strange Fish, Something Fierce
Matthew Lippman: The Book of Love
Matt Mauch: Bird Brain
Orlando Ricardo Menes: Heresies
Miguel Murphy: A Morbid Education
Mario Padilla: Postcards on the Invented Road
Jean-Paul Pecqueur: Real Cyclone
Robert Perchman: Crashing The Hopeful Monster Ball
Michael Robins: Match
Lynn Shaffer: Appearing Act
Kent Shaw: Gigantic
Purvi Shah: Miracle Marks
Gale Thompson: Expeditions to the Polar Seas
Jon Thompson: All Bright and Foreseen
Cheryl Clark Vermeulen: You Can Take It Out
Julie Marie Wade: Must Be Present to Win

Weekly Reads: Siwar Masannat

CSU Poetry Center at AWP:

Last Year's Book Contest Results: