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Slipstream Poetry Chapbook Contest
Past Winners

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2024 Winner: Mather Schneider

Mather Schneider of Tucson, AZ won Slipstream's 2024 poetry chapbook contest for his collection of poems entitled "Much More Than Time". Mather Schneider was born in Peoria, Illinois in 1970. He lived in Washington state for a time, before moving to Tucson in 1997.
Schneider has worked many jobs and for several of those years, he drove a taxi. Currently, he works as an exterminator. He has published hundreds of poems and stories, and is the author of several books, including his first novel, The Bacanora Notebooks, by Anxiety Press. He spends much of his time these days in Mexico, where the poems in this chapbook were written.

2023 Winner: J. R. Thelin

J. R. Thelin was the winner of Slipstream's 2023 poetry chapbook contest for his collection of poems entitled Those Last Few Moments of Light: Poems of the Dead Boy. J. R. Thelin's previous collections of poems include Last Cha Cha in Albuquerque (2017, Main Street Rag Press) and Breath Into Bone (2010, Small's Books), as well as two chapbooks: The Way Out West (2005, Concrete Wolf) and Dorrance, Narrative, History (2004, Pudding House Publications). He has served as co-coordinating editor of The Eleventh Muse and as poetry reader for Shenandoah. After working for many years in development, including stints at Colorado College and Washington and Lee University, Thelin retired as senior development researcher from the University of Virginia at the end of 2020. He is married and lives, writes, and walks in Buena Vista, VA.

2022 Winner: Robert Okaji

Robert Okaji was selected as the winner of Slipstream's 2022 poetry chapbook contest for his collection of poems entitled Buddah's Not Talking. Okaji holds a BA in history, served without distinction in the U.S. Navy, toiled as a university administrator, and no longer owns a bookstore. His honors include the 2021 riverSedge Poetry Prize, the 2021 Etchings Press Poetry Chapbook Prize, and the 1968 Bar-K Ranch Goat-Catching Championship. He lives in Indiana with his wife, stepson and cat, and his poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in several publications including: Threepenny Review, Crannog, Vox Populi, MockingHeart Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Tipton Poetry Journal, Evergreen Review, The Night Heron Barks, Indianapolis Review, Book of Matches, and Slippery Elm.

2021 Winner: Jeanne-Marie Osterman

Jeanne-Marie Osterman won Slipstream's 2021 poetry chapbook contest for her collection of poems entitled All Animals Want the Same Things. She is the author of Shellback (Paloma Press) and the chapbook There's a Hum (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in 45th Parallel Magazine, Borderlands, Cathexis Northwest, New Ohio Review, What Rough Beast, and others. Osterman was a finalist for the 2018 Joy Harjo Poetry Award and the 2017 Levis Prize in Poetry. Originally from Everett, Washington, she now lives in New York City where she is poetry editor for Cagibi, a journal of prose and poetry. Learn more about Jeanne-Marie Osterman at www.ostermanpoetry.com.

2020 Winner: Max Stephan

Max Stephan, of Orchard Park, NY, was the winner of Slipstream's 2020 Poetry Chapbook Competition for his collection Poems About the American Brother. Max's poetry and prose have appeared in the North Dakota Quarterly, Appalachia, the Christian Science Monitor, the Broad River Review, Main Street Rag, the Cold Mountain Review, the Potomac Review, Blueline, the Cimarron Review, the Louisiana Review, and Slipstream, among others. Recently, Stephan was awarded a Fellowship at the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, noted as a finalist in the Rash Award in Poetry Competition (2018, 2019), the Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Contest (2018, 2019), the Homebound Publications Prize (2019), and invited to write the featured story for the Winter/Spring 2020 issue of Appalachia honoring the work of the late Mary Oliver. Stephan is a university professor, specializing in Contemporary American Poetry; runs the poetry series, "Western New York Poets"; and co-hosts "Second Stage Writers," a monthly reading series that brings together both young and established voices.
Learn more about Max Stephan at: www.maxstephan.net

2019 Winner: Pam Davenport

Pam Davenport, of Flagstaff, AZ, was selected as the winner of Slipstream's 2019 Poetry Chapbook Competition for her collection, A Midwest Girl Thanks Patti Smith.
Davenport writes in the deserts and mountains of Arizona and earned an MFA at Pacific University in Oregon. She writes poems to look for what is shimmering beneath the ordinary, as Lucy Brock-Broido recommended. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in Nimrod, Tinderbox, Poetry of the American Southwest, Chiron, New Verse News, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and others.
About A Midwest Girl Thanks Patti Smith, Joseph Miller writes: "These odes form the record of an American life, from childhood to late middle age, helter-skelter in their enthusiasms, exultant in their femaleness."
Ellen Bass writes: "The poems in Pam Davenport's debut collection, A Midwest Girl Thanks Patti Smith, are as earthy and spirited as the horses she describes. Whether it's a teenage girl longing to be "felt up," or the "flesh and pith and skin" of an orange, Davenport writes with honesty and wit about the nature of desire."

2018 Winner: Robert L. Penick

Robert L. Penick, of Louisville, KY, was selected as the winner of Slipstream's 2018 Poetry Chapbook Competition for his collection, Exit, Stage Left. 
Penick's work has appeared in over 100 different literary journals, including The Hudson Review, North American Review, and The California Quarterly. He lives in Louisville with his free-range box turtle, Sheldon, and edits Ristau, a tiny literary annual.
You can find more of his poetry at: theartofmercy.net.

2017 Winner: Alan Catlin

Alan Catlin, of Schenectady, NY, was selected as the winner of Slipstream's 2017 Poetry Chapbook Competition for his collection, Blue Velvet.
Catlin has been publishing for the better part of five decades. During that time he has published thousands of poems in hundreds of magazines from the mundane to the outlandish to the well-known and everything in between. In his working life he was a barman, a profession he credits with warping his mind forever and giving him a unique perspective on life. He has published over sixty full length books and chapbooks including: Last Man Standing from Lummox Press, American Odyssey from Future Cycle Press and forthcoming, Hollyweird from Night Ballet Press, which also published his Beautiful Mutants chapbook. He is the poetry editor of the online poetry magazine misfitmagazine.net.

2016 Winner: Francine Witte

The winner of the 2016 Slipstream Poetry Chapbook Competition was Francine Witte, of New York, NY, for her collection of poems entitled Not All Fires Burn the Same.
A former high school English teacher, Witte grew up in Queens, NY. She earned her MA in English/Creative Writing at SUNY Binghamton and her MFA in poetry at Vermont College. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks Only, Not Only (Finishing Line Press, 2012) and First Rain (Pecan Grove Press, 2009), which won the Pecan Grove Press competition. She also authored the flash fiction chapbooks Cold June (Ropewalk Press), selected by Robert Olen Butler as the winner of the 2010 Thomas A. Wilhelmus Award, and The Wind Twirls Everything (Musclehead Press).

2015  Winner: Neil Carpathios

The winner of the 2015 Slipstream Poetry Chapbook Competition was Neil Carpathios, of Portsmouth, Ohio, for his collection of poems entitled The Function of Sadness.
Carpathios is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Playground of Flesh (Main Street Rag), At the Axis of Imponderables (winner of the Quercus Review Press Book Award), and Beyond the Bones (FutureCycle Press). He is the editor of the anthology, Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio (Ohio University Press, 2015).
His newspaper column, "Let's Talk Poetry," appears weekly in the Portsmouth Daily Times and online, and strives to showcase the works of poets in southern Ohio and around the country. He is an associate professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio.

2014  Winner: Nicole Antonio

The 2014 Slipstream Chapbook Contest winner was Nicole Antonio, of Oakland, California, for her collection of poetry entitled Another Mistake.
Nicole Antonio studied poetry and screen writing at the University of Southern California, obtaining both her Bachelor's in English and Master's in Professional Writing. Her work has appeared in The Nervous Breakdown, Watershed, and The Truth About the Fact. After serving as the Editor in Chief for the USC's Southern California Review, she moved north and now lives in Oakland.
About Another Mistake, Amy Gerstler, author of Dearest Creature and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, writes: "Another Mistake is a powerhouse chapbook. This is a hyper-awake, penetrating, gritty, humane, fearless literary voice...Another Mistake bears fresh, deeply affecting witness to the speed at which Nicole's generation lives, loves, hooks up, slaves and suffers. Our need to embrace dark urges and our fucked up origins, to understand and master pleasure and pain, to be wildly alive but also to face the music, it's all here, articulated with the perfect mix of distance and immediacy.

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       Nicole Antonio (Oakland, CA)

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       John Cullen (Big Rapids, MI)
 

       Sudasi Clement (Santa Fe, NM)

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       Moriah Erickson (Duluth, MN)
 

       Mary Carroll-Hackett (Greenville, NC)

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  • 2009 "From the Age of Miracles"
    David Chorlton (Phoenix, AZ)
     

  • 2008 "Rescue Conditions"
    Carrie Shipers (Lincoln, NE)
     

  • 2007 "Your Whole Life"
    Douglas Goetsch (New York, NY)

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       Terry Godbey (Maitland, FL)
 

  • 2005 "Some Days it's a Love Story"
    Jason Irwin (Astoria, NY)
     

  • 2004 "Radio Dreams"
    Beth Anne Royer (Providence, RI)
     

  • 2003 "Trading Futures"
    Nikki Roszko (Philadelphia, PA)
     

  • 2002 "What Language"
    J. P. Dancing Bear (San Jose, CA)
     

  • 2001 "The Eyes of a Vertical Cut"
    Ronald Wardall (Brooklyn, NY)
     

  • 2000 "Breaking the Captives' Fetters"
    Laurie Mazzaferro (Pittsburgh, PA)

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  • 1999 "Dancing with the One-Armed Man"
    Alison Pelegrin (Fayetteville, AR)
     

  • 1998 "Longing Fervently for Revolution"
    Renny Christopher (Turlock, CA)
     

  • 1997 "Gravel"
    Leslie Anne Mcilroy (Pittsburgh, PA)
     

  • 1996 "The Nietzsche Itinerary"
    Matt Buys (Indianapolis, IN)
     

  • 1995 "Hubba Hubba"
    Katharine Harer (San Francisco, CA)
     

  • 1994 "The Insomniacs"
    David Chorlton (Phoenix, AZ)
     

  • 1993 "Shock Treatment"
    Kurt Nimmo (Canton, MI)
     

  • 1992 "I Would Steal Horses"
    Sherman Alexie (Wellpinit, WA)
     

  • 1991 "The Color of Poison"
    Serena Fusek (Newport News, VA)
     

  • 1990 "The Trial of Mary McCormick"
    Robert Cooperman (Pikesville, MD)
     

  • 1989 "The Fatboy with No Imagination from Down the Block"
    Richard Amidon (Owosso, MI)
     

  • 1988 "A Constituency of Dunces"
    Gerald Locklin (Long Beach, CA)

All-Time Winners List

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