January 10, 2011 Charlotte Pence, a Chapter 16 contributor and Ph.D. candidate in the creative-writing program at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, has just won the Black River Chapbook Competition. Pence’s collection, Branches, will be published by Black Lawrence Press. Given the general current publishing climate, not to mention the market for poetry in particular, Pence is understandably thrilled: “As a young writer, I spent a lot of energy worrying about if someone would read what I spent months writing. With this chapbook, I feel like I can take that energy and put it into enjoying the time writing much more.”
This is not Pence’s first national prize: in 2009, she won the Discovered Voices award, given by Iron Horse Literary Journal given to a graduate student in poetry each year. Branches is not even Pence’s first book: also forthcoming is Lyrical Traditions: The Intersections Between Poems and Songs, a collection of essays she edited for the University Press of Mississippi.
Read more about the Black River prize here.
Tagged: Poetry
