Description: Debut poetry collection chosen by Minnie Bruce Pratt as winner of the Carolina Wren Press Poetry Series prize.
Brief description: Minnie Bruce Pratt published her first book of poetry in 1981 as part of the Women in Print movement in North Carolina. Her second book, Crime Against Nature, received the Lamont Poetry Award from the Academy of American Poets and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her ten books also include S/HE, about gender boundary crossing, Walking Back Up Depot Street, and The Dirt She Ate, winner of a Lambda Literary Award. In addition, she has received numerous other awards, including the Lillian Hellman-Dashiell Hammet award from the Fund for Free Expression, the Larry Levis Poetry Award from Prairie Schooner, a ForeWord (Independent Bookstores and Booksellers Magazine) Best Gay/Lesbian Book of the Year Award, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her work has been reviewed widely including in the New York Times and Publisher's Weekly. Pratt has a received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a fellowship in poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the arts. Born in Alabama, she now lives and works in Syracuse, New York.